The Good, the Bad, and the Badass
by eggs on shells
Summary: When I used the Self-Insert OC no Jutsu, I was expecting someone cool. Preferably of my own gender. I certainly didn't expect to end up as the most useless of the pre-Shippuden characters. Oh, well. I might as well milk this for all its worth.
1. OC Self-Insert no Jutsu!

**Hello World!**

**This is my first story. I hope you enjoy.**

* * *

"Hah!" I smirked to myself. "My diabolical plan is complete!"

My brother looked at me and raised an eyebrow. He scanned the room, where random chunks of cardboard, clearly scientific diagrams, cheese crackers, and polyethylene terephthalate were scattered about haphazardly. Then he looked back to the center, where I had drawn a very complicated design involving velociraptors, Abraham Lincoln, and semi-automatic weapons. Truly, this was the greatest feat of science anyone had ever managed to accomplish in the history of the universe.

"…What are you doing again?" he asked.

"A mere mortal like you would never be able to understand!" I crowed. "This here is my secret to conquering the world! Mua ha ha ha ha!"

He paused again. "Your what?"

"My secret to conquering the world!"

"…Your secret to conquering the world is a drawing of a duck in chalk in the middle of the floor?" he asked skeptically.

"It's not a _duck_!" I protested hotly. "It's a complex seal designed to bend time and space, to bridge the gap between parallel universes!"

"_Riiight_," he nodded gravely. "And I suppose this magical…thing of yours is going to save you when Mom and Dad come home and realize you've trashed the new tile floor which they _just _got cleaned?"

"Ummm…" I hemmed and hawed. "Ahhh…"

"Bet you didn't think of that, did you?" he asked drily.

Rats! Foiled again! There was only one thing I could do at this point.

"SELF-INSERT OC NO JUTSU!" I yelled, clapping my hands together as I activated my masterful seal.

The last thing I heard before the giant flash of light consumed me was my brother's bewildered, "What the hell?"

* * *

I opened my eyes. I was inside a traditional-looking Japanese home, with wooden floorboards and sliding doors and everything like that. Outside, a bunch of anachronistic ninjas wearing flak jackets with an unreasonably obvious red swirly target sign on the back were jumping from building to building, alongside equally anachronistic telephone poles. Some of them were even equipped with radios and other objects based on the utilization of electromagnetic waves and possibly integrated circuits, inventions which in reality came hundreds of years after gunpowder, which was oddly lacking in this world.

"SUCCESS!" I crowed to no one in particular. "I AM TRIUMPHANT!"

Now that I was sure that my flawless jutsu had worked, I looked down at myself, trying to figure out who I was. I also skipped that entire time period of "freak out oh my god my family is gone I want to go back to earth blah blah blah" that normal people would do for the sake of exposition. Because no one wants to read about that, right?

Okay, I admit it. My jutsu wasn't _that _flawless yet. I couldn't exactly control who I would end up as in this world. But I _would _get their powers and memories and stuff. I bet I was someone awesome! Oh, gods, I hoped it was Kakashi-sensei. Kakashi-sensei is awesome! (I actually don't know why I like him so much…I just…do. In the most heterosexual way, of course.) Well, maybe not Kakashi, because if I took over Kakashi's brain, then I wouldn't get to know him in person. Hmmm…

I mean, Naruto's cool too, I guess, and Sasuke before he became all bitchy was okay, but _man_, they were just _so _OP that it was ridiculous. Did you guys even read the last few manga chapters? There were like, meteors and shit flying down from the sky. I was all, WTF, Kishimoto? (Then again, it's anime. Making sense isn't part of the deal.)

And I guess Shino would be pretty cool, too, even if having bugs living inside of me was kind of creepy. Or maybe Neji, because even though he started out like a bitch he got better after being subjected to the Therapy no Jutsu. Lee was awesome, too, but the green jumpsuits were a bit _meh_. Shikamaru was cool, too, but it's like _impossible _for me to be that lazy because I'm the type of person who's constantly on pure glucose solution, and I was afraid I'd give everyone a heart attack if I actually tried taking stuff seriously.

I also liked Gaara, but this looked like Konoha, so that was unfortunate. Oh, well. You can't have everything. I don't like the desert, anyway. There is nothing more annoying than getting sand in your shoes. Or in your sandals. Maybe that's why they're called sand-als.

Anyway, who am I?

I tried peeking through the person's memories, but didn't come up with much. The problem with this jutsu was that it basically overruled all personality, meaning I wouldn't get anything about myself – just what I knew about others, so I wouldn't be suspicious. I figured I could always deduce who I was based on what I _hadn't _seen.

Hmmm…

Well, based on knowledge alone, this person didn't know much apart from basic Academy stuff, so that unfortunately ruled out Kakashi-sensei. Damn.

That also ruled out the clan heirs…so strike _them_ out.

No Great Fireball Jutsu or Shadow Clone, either…

Damn, who was I? I could have sworn I set the parameters to "main characters"!

Well, at this point in time…

No.

_ No._

Oh, gods. No, no, no, no, no.

_ Getting teased about a forehead that wasn't even that big, making friends with Ino, then getting in a bitch fight with Ino just because of a stupid_guy_, and then – _

I looked down again and nearly smacked myself for not being able to see it before.

Red dress. Pink hair.

"NOOOOOOO!" I screamed.

I'm _SAKURA!_

* * *

Sheesh. Of all the characters, it had to be a _girl. _And of all the girls, it had to be _Sakura?_

Okay, that didn't come out right. To all the Sakura fans out there (because this _is _fanfiction, after all) I am sorry. I'm not a hater or whatever. But _man_, she was useless at this point in time. Sure, she got pretty badass later on, I guess, but as of right now she was literally the most useless character of the Rookie Nine. Even _Hinata _had a pretty good chance against her in a fair fight. Even with her crippling shyness she'd probably be able to beat Sakura to the ground.

And I'm not miso - misogyn - woman-hater-istic, either. But, put yourself in my shoes, just for a sec. I don't know about you (hey, there are some people out there who are like that), but getting unintentional instantaneous transgender surgery isn't exactly on the top of my to-do list.

So.

I'm a girl.

WTF.

What? No! I'm not doing _that_. What is up with you, internet? That's _gross_! She's like, twelve!

So, because this is fiction, and I actually don't know what it feels like to suddenly turn into a girl, and I'm just writing myself into a transgender role for laughs (no offense to people out there who are really transgender – that's totally cool), I am just going to skip over that portion, too. Yeah...

Imagine me freaking out for a few seconds. Are we done? Okay. Now, we are going to move on and pretend that all *this* never happened.

My main problem was that Sakura was pretty much civilian. Everyone else in Naruto's year was some sort of clan heir or whatever, right? Ino-Shika-Cho…clan heirs. Hinata Hyuga, Shino Aburame, and Kiba Inuzaka. Also clan heirs. Sasuke was an Uchiha. And Naruto had an effing _Hokage _as his dad (plus he was part of the Uzumaki clan, which was also pretty damn badass, even if he didn't know any of that yet, but he had a freaking bijuu locked up inside of him, too, so, you know. Free heal FTW.)

And then…_Sakura_.

I suppose she did well enough for herself, seeing where she started out, but _man_. I don't even get some cool eye shit.

_ Well, screw you too!_ I mentally berated this world, big fat anime tears rolling down my eyes. _The Sharingan's so ridiculously OP anyway!_

Well, I guess things couldn't be _too _bad. At least Sakura's smart. And she has good chakara control. I'm pretty sure she could have been awesome earlier on if she actually had taken things seriously instead of running after Sasuke. Speaking of whom…he was probably in full-on emo mode by now, wasn't he? Although I remember he wasn't a bitch yet. That was _after _the Forest of Death and Orochimaru and all that jazz.

People tend to forget that during Kakashi's test, he was the first one to offer Naruto food. So he was just a moody depressed kid who was decent on the inside. He was actually making friends and all that. Then it all went to hell when Orochimaru showed up. And then I don't know how it devolved after that (Kishimoto just went a bit wacko with this kid…I was like, okay, man, overreacting much?). But yeah. Maybe if we prevented that one push that was a snake pedo hickey – I mean, a very powerful jutsu called the Cursed Seal that just _happens _to involve a bite on the neck-shoulder junction and creepy old men possessing the bodies of young attractive boys – we could prevent that entire massive cliff that he just sort of dove off after that.

Sasuke's not my favorite character, but I think he got a bit of a raw deal in the shonen manga roles world.

(Not as much as Kakashi, though. I mean, Obito, then Rin, then unknowingly releasing sensitive info to your best friend turned evil that you thought was dead…and the worst part was, he actually had good intentions throughout the whole thing. Plus dead mom, dead dad, dead team, dead teacher, dead everything, and after that a student who just upped and ran away on a quest of betrayal and revenge. Talk about a shitty life. Sasuke's angsty angstiness ain't got nothin' on Kakashi-sensei.)

Too bad I can't change that, since that's the past, and in the rules of anti-Mary Sue you can't go back in time to make the life of your favorite character better!

Meh, I suppose I'll just stick to making sure Sasuke stays relatively sane.

OH, and I remember a little now. Naruto also used to be a massive idiot. Well, more of one than he was now. Naruto after the time-skip was an idiot, but at least he had massive OP skills to back himself up. Naruto pre-Shippuden was floored by a simple snare trap.

Poopsicles. My teammates are an emo and an idiot. Luckily for Kakashi-sensei-sama-senpai-san-sama-kun, there was the flawless _me _to cancel their deficiencies out. Clearly.

And in no way am I maintaining _any _delusions of self-grandeur.

And in _no _way do I have a massive crush on Kakashi-sensei.

…Okay, maybe a little. But that's beside the point!

That meant I had tomorrow – the day Naruto painted the Hokage monument – the day after – the graduation test and Naruto stealing the forbidden jutsu scroll – and one more day – actual team assignments – before Kakashi's bell test.

Now, I knew that if I just fed Naruto the damn food like I was supposed to, we'd pass, but all the same, the way Kakashi took out Sakura in episode four or five or whatever was _downright embarrassing_. Like, he didn't even do anything to her. One genjutsu. One _academy-level _genjutsu, to be precise. That was all it took. He didn't even have to make any bodily contact like he did with Naruto and Sasuke. She supposedly was smart and had good chakra control, but damn if I never saw her use it until after Shippuden. All things considered, she had lost to the dead last in the class. The dead last jinchuuriki, but still, a dead last.

Damn you, Kishimoto, and your useless female characters. You know you screwed something up when even a self-insert OC is more loveable than the actual Sakura. (Darkpetal16, if you're reading this, then I said hi. But you probably don't know me. Anyway…)

Anyway, from today, Sakura – or me-in-Sakura's-body like the stereotypical self-insert this was – was going to go through hell. Self-induced hell, but still, hell.

Step one: lose the dress.

Which was actually harder than it sounded, because that was just about the only thing she owned. It took me at least fifteen minutes of digging in the back of her closet to find actual pants and a regular shirt. The pants were green, which was okay, but the shirt was pink. Better than nothing, though, since Tenten wore the same colors. I made a note: _buy new clothes. _Even if this was anime, where orange jumpsuits seemed to have absolutely no affect on someone's ninja skills, I didn't want to take any chances whatsoever.

Plus I don't like pink. I have a little cousin who is obsessed with it. That, and Disney princesses. Literally, everything she owns has pink on it somewhere, and god, she hurts my eyes. Also, she is very young and therefore very annoying. And she always comes over like every week and my brother and I used to babysit her together, except that he recently left for college and somehow managed to trick our parents into thinking that it was a reasonable reason to ditch his familial responsibilities, so now I have to deal with her alone. So maybe I have learned to associate pink with a very traumatizing adolescent experience.

I think I'll chop off the hair, too. Screw you, Sakura. I can do whatever the heck I want. Starting now, you are getting a hilarious transgender transformation. MUAHAHAHA!

Well, maybe not. I can't suddenly chop off all my hair because then Ino will probably do something to and I really have no idea how to deal with someone like Ino. So yeah. I think I'll wait until after Kakashi-sensei becomes my teacher -

*fanboy moment*

\- ahem. After Kakashi-sensei becomes my teacher, I'll be able to pin my extreme makeover on him. Ha.

But doing a bit of personal reorganization won't show up physically.

I started out easy by trying out the basic academy jutsu (Henge, Kawarimi, and the useless version of the Clone). This, at least, I managed to do perfectly, thanks to Sakura's good chakra control, so I knew I had nothing to worry about. I also started a little early on wall-walking, and Sakura got it down pat, so I guess that was another tiny bonus for being stuck in Sakura's body compared to all the other characters. I added _practice water walking tomorrow_, since it was already a bit late today, to my mental to-do list.

She also had decent aim, though whether it was because of _her _or _my _leftover muscle memory was a different matter. Same for martial arts forms. Now, back at home, my super-Asian parents enrolled me in an ass ton of different martial arts because, apparently, a 5.0 GPA and 2400 SAT and 5's on 40 AP exams just aren't enough to get you into college anymore. Also, because I was a huge pain in the ass as a little kid and kept running around and breaking shit so they enrolled me under the most brutal guy in the history of the world to control my hyperactive tendencies and hopefully teach me some discipline.

All right, I'm exaggerating. My sensei was actually a pretty nice guy. And I learned a lot under him. I'm nowhere near master status, but I can hold my own in a fight. Anyway, that was where I was now. I went outside and sparred with a tree for a bit, just to get used to being, like, an entire foot shorter, while simultaneously practicing packing chakra into my fists just like they did in the anime (that part was actually cool, if a bit flashy). Sakura didn't have that much chakra, but she still managed to put dents in trees and cracks in rocks.

Good enough for a twelve-year-old kid, I suppose.

I also found that by packing chakra into the right muscles (hey – I do sports _and _my Asian mummy is making me study anatomy because I'm going to be a doctor in the future, no questions asked, so I know what the _latissimus dorsi _is) I could increase Sakura's stamina. The nice thing about chakra packing was that it actually did increase internal reserves without actually wasting the chakra itself, meaning I could work out for quite a while without getting completely exhausted.

Doing a thousand pull-ups in a row actually felt kind of badass.

Chakra was actually kind of cool. I mean, even as the physically weakest kid in the class, she was still doing the same amount of push-ups as I was doing in the normal world.

Huh.

That's actually kind of depressing.

Effing ninjas.

When it finally got dark, and my adoptive (though they didn't know it yet) parents called me inside, I was reasonably sore. Not exhausted, but tired enough to know that I was doing a good job. Hey, I was a ninja. With chakra. I'm pretty sure that in a few hours I'll be fine. Versus in the real world, where it takes at least a week to adapt to a new training regime.

As I sat eating dinner and pretending nothing was wrong, I started going through my options in this world. Clearly, decent levels of physical strength was a must, but I also had to specialize in _something_. I knew that Sakura did medical ninjutsu and power punches, which was cool, but I wanted to see if I couldn't do something else, too. Something that was actually practical. News flash! Pretty much every fight in Naruto is like, full of unnecessary movement.

Taijutsu? Nah, you had to get up close and personal for that. Even though I was decently trained in close combat, I was more of the "stand back and snipe at them from 100 meters away" sort of guy. A good backup study, though.

Genjutsu? A possibility, but with all the stupid Uchihas running around it wouldn't be that useful – at least, against the bad guys that really mattered. Sakura was pretty good at breaking out of genjutsu on her own, anyway. So that was out.

Ninjutsu? I might learn a few techniques. I'd never become a master, though. Even Kakashi, who apparently knew a thousand techniques, still never did anything except spam Raikiri, and, after part two, Kamui.

Stupid OP Sharingan. So unfair! I want a cool jutsu like that! Even if it's OP!

Weapons specialist? Tenten was cool, but I didn't want to steal her specialty, and anyway, a strong enough wind jutsu would make me useless. Also, all that unrolling of sealing scrolls took too much time. Maybe I could get some badass sword or whatever later, if I felt like it.

Speaking of sealing, what about Fuinjutsu? It's useful, but except for the jinchuuriki, explosive tags, and the Flying Thunder God thing that Naruto's dad came up with (Minato Namikaze, by the way, is my second man-crush), also not very applicable to combat situations. It couldn't hurt to learn how to use it, though. Also, summoning.

Decisions, decisions…

Back to medical ninjutsu. It was helpful, but I couldn't use _just _that. Unless…I figured out how to use medical ninjutsu from a distance, and use it _against _my enemies? I mean, they always showed the medic-nins _healing _people, but what if they did it wrong? Like, what if they, I don't know, meant to start healing in one place, but then accidentally induced cell multiplication somewhere else, so that the person got cancer? Or just induce too much healing that the body goes into overdrive? Or just shut down organs altogether?

That would be cool. Creepy, but cool.

God, I'd be a terrible doctor. And you know what? This is the ninja world, where they deal in child soldiers. They'd love me for it.

(Not that I support child slavery and war in real life. But, you know, when things are 2D and colored brightly, it makes even the most serious of global social issues all better.)

Still, I had no idea if it was even possible to do distance healing, meaning that if I wanted to use medical ninjutsu in combat, I'd have to get up close and personal, which was, once again, not my cup of tea.

Finally, I decided that I wouldn't make any choices yet until I figured out just exactly what I was getting in for. Taijutsu I was already decent at, but I could work on speed training, now that I was a ninja. I could pick up some of those weights that Lee used. Breaking out of genjutsu and casting a few simple ones for distraction's sake would also be good. Learning my chakra nature was also a must. Simple sealing, and maybe summoning sometime later – but not slugs (I don't like gastropods, okay?). And I guess some healing wouldn't hurt. It would definitely help for someone that _wasn't ridiculously OP *cough* Naruto and Sasuke and basically all the major villains in Part II *cough* _such as me.

I reviewed my forms and did another set of push-ups, squats, and sit-ups that would make Gai and Lee proud before I went to bed.

Thus ended day one.


	2. Expendable Fish

**Thanks for the support peeps! I wasn't expecting it to be so well-received, so here we go. Chapter 2!**

* * *

The next morning, I woke up early (before the sun rose), ate a _healthy, balanced breakfast _(because NO ONE is getting between me and my precious food, ya hear? NO ONE), and went down to town to get a new wardrobe. Konoha was a ninja village, where people worked odd hours, so most shops were open 24/7 for emergencies and such. Me walking around buying stuff at four A.M. wasn't much of a strange sight.

I know, right? A teenager waking up willingly before noon. Let's just blame it on the time zone change.

First, though, I stopped at a weapons shop and equipped myself with weights. In this world, the laws of physics might not have applied, but that didn't mean physics didn't help. Instead of just getting weights for my shins, I also got them for my thighs, abdomen, and upper and lower arms. These weren't just any regular weights, either. They doubled as chakra-storing armor. Unlike Lee, who would have to pause to take off his weights every time he wanted to go into Super Saiyan mode, all I had to do was release my chakra flow, as that was what made the weights so heavy. I didn't even know they existed. Huh.

I could channel as much chakra into it as I wanted. The more chakra I gave it, the heavier it got, obviously. But it stored that chakra, too, just like a super-watered-down version of Tsunade's Yin seal (also something I thought was pretty badass). And another thing – since that chakra usage would leave empty stores where there once was energy, my body would naturally make more chakra to fill that vacuum – effectively letting me increase my chakra reserves twice as fast.

(FYI, I totally just pulled that out of my ass. Because as awesome those training weights are, I doubt I'll have time to pull them off in the middle of a real fight. So there. I just violated Gary-Stu rule #54, giving yourself a bunch of badass OP equipment that doesn't exist in real life. Har-de-har-har.)

I wore these weights under my regular clothes all day, so that my shopping wouldn't be a waste of time, strength-wise. Naturally I wouldn't become a Lee or Gai-sensei right away, but I could still feel the pleasant burn in my muscles that came from a good workout.

This was anime, so I still wanted something cool, but not a pink dress. Eventually I settled on a black vinyl jumpsuit with a trench coat. Now, in real life, jumpsuits are actually horrible for combat, since they are highly restrictive in movement (plus every time you need to go to the bathroom, you have to unzip the whole thing), and trench coats aren't that much better, since stuff can get stuck on you when you don't know it. But this was anime, and for my purposes – looking cool – it suited me. In the laws of animation, anything that flares as you walk automatically gives you a 10x power upgrade regardless of its actual application in real life. Also, no one ever goes to the bathroom in animation. EVER. If they do, then they do it off-screen.

Considering I was going to be stuck in this exact same set of clothes for the entire damn first part of the story, you bet your ass I'm going to milk it for all it's worth.

Aw, man, this is going to be so awesome! I just totally want to see everyone's faces when they see Sakura show up looking like that.

But then I frowned. That would lead to a lot of unwanted questions, and then I'd have to make up something to explain. Meh. Better let everyone think I'm still the same, and then show up looking all serious later when we're at the Chunin Exams and blame it on Kakashi-sensei's influence. It made me barf to wear that ugly dress one more time, but I was a ninja. I could take it.

And don't call me gay for not liking her outfit (no offense to gay people, either – my best friend is gay, says every guy who doesn't want to be accused of being a homophobe, ever). There's a difference between not caring how you look, as in, I'll spend the day in my pajamas from last week, and not caring how you look, as in, heh…red dress that makes no sense.

I did, however, continue to hide my extra armor underneath. It was a good exercise.

I still had a while before school started, so I decided to detour to the ninja shop to grab some chakra paper – which, perhaps not so surprisingly, crinkled in my hand. That was a bit odd. I had pegged Sakura as an earth or water type, if she ever had one (which I don't think she ever found out, actually). Maybe the lightning was my influence. I'm the type of person who can get shit done super fast if I have the proper motivation.

After that, I went to the library to check out a few books on medical ninjutsu, fuinjutsu, and genjutsu. Regular ninjutsu and summoning could wait until I could actually hound Kakashi-sensei about these skills.

Hound, ha!

No pun intended.

Clearly.

*brick*

It was at this moment that I realized Sakura also had an eidetic memory, _and _was ambidextrous – which both made me respect her more and frustrated me to no end. I mean, she had some pretty good non-OP bloodline limits on her hands, and she wasted all her early years playing useless girly games. Stupid.

(Speaking of which…so she's an amazing medic-nin and super strong and stuff, right? Cut to chapter 700: she's a housewife dusting shelves. WTF HAPPENED, GIRL? Even Ino's busy teaching her kids Ino-Shika-Cho combo jutsus and bossing around her friends and stuff!)

Anyway, I breezed through those books like no tomorrow, and by the time the bell rang for class, I already knew how to heal minor cuts and bruises from a regular fight, dispel up to C-rank genjutsus, and make sealing scrolls for nonliving items like weapons and food. Not bad for a genin. Though I wouldn't be happy until I a) learned Tsunade's beast medical ninjutsu thing _and _somehow figured out how to apply it from a distance, b) dispel the goddamned Tsukuyomi (I DON'T CARE IF IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!) and c) manage to reverse engineer the Hiraishin no Jutsu.

So what if fuinjutsu is supposedly the most impossible ninja art ever? I'll figure out something. Maybe.

* * *

Class was mind-numbingly boring. I was, after all, a sixteen-year-old stuck in a twelve-year-old's body. To amuse myself, I started weaving minor genjutsus on my classmates – most of whom failed abysmally at dispelling them. Even Iruka-sensei, a chunin, didn't realize that it was me making everyone else suddenly jump up and dance randomly. He seemed to think that it was some sort of mass-organized class prank.

So he made us all do the Henge pop quiz.

_Oh, right_, I thought. _It's this time again…_

*POOF*

"NARUTO!"

After class was over, I went to the library and checked out some more books, and then headed to the local river just to reassure myself that Sakura's chakra control was still perfect. After that, I went home, and in the secrecy of our fence, continued to read up on my projects while doing upside-down head-to-knee exercises while sticking to a tree branch with my own chakra.

Lee and Gai-sensei, be proud of me.

By that night, I was up to antidote and poison creation, dispelling C-rank genjutsus a little faster (I couldn't be sure since I was casting them on myself), and a bit more on the fuinjutsu.

Speaking of sealing theory…

This shit is basically Calculus and the Graph Theory but with kanji! (And also quantum physics and stuff I have no idea about, but it's okay, because I have chakra, and chakra is basically ninja magic, and magic solves all problem.) I can't believe it! Damn ninjas. But I guess it's not their fault. If you were learning how to save yourself on the front lines, of course you'd choose learning how to throw a kunai than solving differential equations on a piece of paper.

Reverse-engineering the Hiraishin no Jutsu should be almost a piece of cake now! Now if only I could convince Kakashi-sensei to part with that beloved three-pronged dagger of his (because I'm pretty damn sure he still has it around somewhere) so I could inspect it, we might actually be on to something.

The next few days, including the graduation test and the whole "Naruto stole the secret scroll!" fiasco, went by similarly. Sakura's endurance had improved by leaps and bounds (not that that was saying much, since her reserves had already been poor to start), and I had basically exhausted all my options to public material available on medical ninjutsu, genjutsu, and fuinjutsu. The latter was especially difficult since most resources had been destroyed or labeled as kinjutsu and hidden away since the destruction of Ushizogakure and the Fourth Hokage. So sad.

But there were reference books on other, more advanced topics (such as space-time ninjutsu) _related _to fuinjutsu. Of course, most of that was just history and speculation, but there were maybe one or two chapters that talked about real-world applications, including with fuinjutsu, so...I'd take what I could get.

I'll figure out this space-time ninjutsu business. One day. One day…

Meanwhile, though, I practiced making sealing scrolls on my bedroom floor. So far, I had one for my kunai, one for shuriken, one for senbon, one for sealing tags (a seal for a seal – neat, huh?), one for basic medical supplies, one for backup clothing, one for food, and one for the rest of the stuff in the Boy Scout ten essentials. Those were simple enough. Tenten did them for her weapons, after all, so it made sense that someone with enough time and concentration would be able to make scrolls for other basic needs. I would never be a seal master – even if I had the chakra necessary to hold down a bijuu I ain't going nowhere near that shit – but I still want the Hiraishin.

I don't care if it's OP. I'm doing it!

I can imagine it now…crazy person in black trench coat zipping around healing people wrong and making them keel over. God, why didn't anyone in Naruto ever think of that?

As for genjutsu, I continued to screw around with my classmates, my family, random civilians, particularly unskilled genin, and occasionally the unobservant chunin.

And when I was sure that no one was paying attention to me, I snuck away back to the river and practiced healing jutsus on the fish while standing on the moving water as a dual chakra control exercise. It turns out, you _can _use medical ninjutsu at a distance – but the reason why they don't is because it's so hard to control, so the further away you are the more danger it poses to your patient.

(P.S. I have nothing against fish, but in this world of expendable characters, someone has to be a test subject, and I'd rather it be fish.)

Except in my case, losing control was actually what I wanted. Because, you know. Jerks like Orochimaru and Kabuto. Seriously. I can't believe medics are so underrated in, like, every shonen manga. Seriously. I could crawl into Danzo's house right now and give him a heart attack, and you know what people will say? _Meh. He's old. About time. _And no bloodstains! No ANBU with their shiny swords and funky masks!

(You know how in Bleach, 4th Division is the weakest division, so they're healing people and stuff? I don't know about you, but if I had doctors, I wouldn't be making them clean sewers. Apart from the fact that I've never seen any of them wash their hands, people do make…mistakes. Lots of them. And in a world where there's no such thing as patient protection laws, I could theoretically coincidentally miss some jerkass's veins about eighteen times before I give him the shot in the right place. There's a reason why doctors – at least the good ones – make six-figure salaries.)

It still sucked that I couldn't heal people – well, attempt to heal and end up killing them – at a distance. But at least I could defend myself. I had the ability kill fish even when separated by some air and moving water, up to about ten meters or so but I would lose contact after a certain distance. I wasn't sure if it was because Sakura didn't have enough chakra, or because that was the limit of the technique itself. Something else I would have to research, apparently.

All throughout the night, and even the morning before team assignments, I was constantly training myself. And so, when we showed up that morning (along with Naruto, to the surprise of many, though certainly not me) I was ready. Possibly better than any other genin there, in terms of the basics. I still didn't know any ninjutsu, unless you counted the basic chakra exercises and making chakra wire and that sort of thing, but I would be studying under the greatest master of ninjutsu in the Five Elemental Nations in a day, so that was of no consequence whatsoever.

Don't try to deny it, Sarutobi. You totally stacked these genin teams; admit it.

Minor distance healing and self-healing during combat or under stress – check. A-rank genjutsu dispelling and C-rank genjutsu casting – check. (Hey, I saw Shikamaru do it – just break your own finger or something. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.) Survival-standards fuinjutsu – check. Along with better taijutsu, speed, and stamina than expected on grade reports, and knowledge of my own chakra affinity, I was set.

All right, go ahead. Call me a Gary-sue or a Mary-Stu. (What the hell am I; I'm a boy unwillingly stuck in a girl's body. And for the sake of exposition I'll be going no further than that into the realms of anatomy and physical development. Ladies, I didn't learn about what you had to go through every month until literally last year – and you have my utmost sympathies. *ahem* Moving on…)

But in all honesty this is where Sakura should have been if she had been taking her life seriously instead of mooning over some boy. Seriously, kids. You guys are like, twelve. None of this should matter yet. She had a brain; she just didn't use it.

* * *

That morning I showed up as usual, and fought with Ino over sitting next to Sasuke, just to mess with her. Ino wasn't my favorite character. She was strong, but like Sakura, she didn't push herself to her full potential. It still amazed me that kids in ninja training could do that. Hello? You're throwing around sharp, pointy objects that can kill people. Your profession involves taking lives while trying to avoid the same thing being done to you.

But it's a kids' show. What can I do.

The entire day was predictable and boring, to be honest. The only funny part was when Naruto accidentally kissed Sasuke, and when I managed to Genjutsu the team assignment sheet while Iruka-sensei was trying to break the two boys apart while attempting to defend Naruto from the horde of angry fangirls for stealing their god's first kiss. I just wanted to crack up at Ino's facial expression when she heard that she was put on a team with Naruto and Kiba, but I refrained – because then Iruka-sensei (who had figured out that the recent pranks was some budding genjutsu prodigy by now) would be certain that it was me.

Rather, a lot of people suspected Naruto for the pranks, but they knew it couldn't be him because his chakra control was too bad and he was overall too dumb to pull off something so sneaky. If it had been Naruto, he would have been bragging about his pranks. I found myself a candidate for a few seconds, but since I was the perfect student, and I didn't know any genjutsu as a civilian girl, they let me slide and focused their attentions on a few of the more mischievous clan brats.

It was then that I found myself with Naruto and Sasuke waiting in the empty classroom. I was _so _bored. Even though I knew this was going to happen, and I had brought study material with me, I was still bored. Kakashi-sensei, why must you make us wait so long? It's a total waste of time! Surely you wouldn't…

Unless this was some sort of test that the anime missed out on.

I glanced around the room and tried to sense any other presence other than Naruto, Sasuke, and me. Sakura wasn't a born Sensor in the natural sense, but with her good control I figured out yesterday that I could send out my chakra like sonar beams and _ping _my targets. Unfortunately it very, very inefficient, not like Karin who could just sense people automatically, but it did its purpose for an empty classroom.

There was someone hiding in the roof.

_So Kakashi-sensei really wasn't late after all. He was simply hiding and waiting for the genin to find him, and if they didn't find him, it was their loss. Those three hours, I'm guessing, are the limits of his patience – or the limits of what was acceptable to still have enough time to train a team without them killing themselves out of incompetence. _

_ Sneaky Kakashi-sensei! Stupid, stupid Team 7! Why didn't you figure it out before? That was so easy!_

Of course, I knew Kakashi was normally late because he lost track of time at the memorial stone. So maybe it wasn't all the time. Just sometimes. Surely he'd know enough to be on time when something important was going on. Such as, an emergency call by the Hokage, or some time-dependent mission, or meeting a new Genin team.

Now I was faced with a dilemma. Sure, these would be my teammates – I'd make sure of it – but I didn't want to reveal my full abilities just yet. Or maybe I'd at least show Kakashi-sensei that I was serious about this ninja business.

So I finally concluded that revealing Kakashi-sensei in the roof-boards was the right thing to do. Now how to approach this? Well, the simplest answer immediately came to me. I got up, started pacing like nothing was wrong, and then, as soon as I coincidentally neared the chalkboard, swung myself around, grabbing the eraser in the process, and using the momentum of my body swing to launch the thing right at our future sensei's hiding spot.

_ SMACK!_

"Sakura? What did you do that for?" Naruto asked.

"There's a guy hiding up there," I said, and watched smugly as my super strength cracked the ceiling tiles, sending down K–

…-onohamaru.

"Ow!" he yelled.

"Damn," I muttered. "So Kakashi-sensei really _is _late, after all."

"What are you doing here?!" Naruto was yelling.

"I was spying on you!" Konohamaru yelled back, and the two of them started to get in a heated and pointless argument.

I, meanwhile, was left to question the reliability of my chakra sonar technique. Turns out it can only help me sense if something is there, not who it is. It made sense, I supposed. I could only send out one narrow beam at a time, and it would take multiple shots to determine how big the person was or how developed their chakra pathways were. If I got really good, I might be able to determine the nature of their chakra signatures. Kind of like in Battleship, where you needed several tries to find out where one ship was, and then several more tries to tell how big it was.

"Well, I don't know why you're here, squirt, but you're not a real ninja yet, so you hafta leave!" Naruto yelled at Konohamaru. The little boy, huffing angrily, stalked out.

"Well. That was interesting," I shrugged. _Dammit Kakashi-sensei…you late person…_ Then I returned to my books.

As I read, I noticed that Sasuke was staring at the book out of the corner of his eye. I raised an eyebrow, and he turned away.

I rolled my eyes. "Seriously, you socially inept person," I snorted, and chucked a book I had already read at him. "Here, take it."

So poor Naruto was left stuck in a room with two people who actually _willingly _read books in their free time.

I turned to him. "You want one, too?" The resulting look on his face was just so horrified that I _had _to laugh. Honestly. "If you want to become Hokage, you're going to be doing a lot of reading. And it'll be boring paperwork, not on cool jutsus like these. You really need to work on your genjutsu and chakra control skills, bud."

So Naruto had grumbled a bit, but he actually settled down, albeit under protest.

* * *

It took Kakashi-sensei another whole hour to show up. When he entered the room, I don't know exactly what he was expecting, but it probably wasn't three relatively well-behaved kids silently reading informational texts together.

Well. Until he showed up, anyway.

"Not bad," he muttered. "Maybe you squirts this year might actually have a chance – " he started to say.

I jumped up, screaming in Sakura's ridiculously squeaky and high fangirl voice, "KAKASHI-SENSEI-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMAAAAAAAAAAAA – "

His one eye disturbed plenty of disturbed shock. Whatever praise he had been about to give us had gone out the window. He stared at me in silence for a few seconds. Then he looked like he was going to say something, but decided against it. "Meet me on the roof in five," he finally said curtly, leaving the room as fast as possible, and it occurred to me that despite the fact that he disguised it better he was still just as socially stunted as Sasuke was. Then he vanished.

" – KUN!" I finished.

"EH?" Naruto yelled. "That weirdo is our sensei?"

"Hn," Sasuke grunted.

_Ah, yes, _I thought, stroking an invisible beard. _It is the famous Way of the Hn, founded by Madara Uchiha himself._

I shrugged, and then vaulted myself out the window and climbed up the side of the school since taking the stairs was for losers.

Plus I was too lazy to walk down to the end of the hallway. The good programmer is the lazy programmer.

If Kakashi-sensei was surprised by me swinging over the side of the railing from the opposite side of the stairs, he didn't show it. Instead, we both calmly waited for the other two to come up the stairs, Naruto barreling through like a massive bundle of energy with Sasuke following at a slow saunter shortly after, the familiar scowl on his face and his hands in his pockets.

"Well, now that we're all here," Kakashi-sensei said calmly, "why don't you introduce yourselves. Names, hobbies, likes, dislikes, dreams for the future, and so on."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "You look kind of suspicious there. Why don't you go first?"

Kakashi fixed him with a piercing gaze for a few moments, then shrugged and complied with his usual speech. "My name is Kakashi Hatake. I won't tell you my hobbies…I have some likes and dislikes…Dreams for the future?...hmmm…"

When it was clear that he wasn't going to elaborate any further, Naruto muttered, "So all we know about him is his name?" I shrugged in response.

"Okay, now your turn," Kakashi-sensei continued, like nothing was wrong. "You in the orange jumpsuit and blonde hair, first."

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! That's me! I'm Naruto Uzumaki! I like ramen! I hate the three minutes you have to wait for cup ramen to cook! My dream for the future is to be the best Hokage there ever was, believe it! And my hobbies are…pranks, I guess." Ah. I'd forgotten how _loud _Naruto used to be. He was even louder when you were in his immediate vicinity. Exclamation marks simply didn't do this kid justice.

"The girl next," Kakashi-sensei said.

There was a silence.

_Troll mode, activate! _I smirked.

"Psst. Sasuke. I think he means you," I whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.

There was another pause.

Then Naruto tumbled off his seat, laughing. "Oh my god, Sakura! That was great! You just called teme a_girl!_" I stole a glance at Kakashi-sensei, who was as stoic as ever, but the slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes showed that even he was amused.

Eventually we calmed down enough for Sasuke to get through his super-emo spiel. "Blah blah blah curse you Sasuke's brother blah blah blah revenge blah restore my clan…"

"That's so wonderful," I sighed as fangirl-y as possible. "Sasuke-kun's greatest dream is to be a daddy to lots and lots of babies."

He looked affronted.

"What?" I asked. "A clan is just a huge family, right? You're going to have to get lots of little Uchihas _somehow_. Unless you're asexual, and planning to replicate by splitting in half and cloning yourself like some angst-ridden amoeba. Which is totally cool, by the way. I do not discriminate against mitosis-reliant organisms."

This time even Kakashi-sensei couldn't hide a snort as he pointed to me – for real, this time.

I still wasn't done yet, though.

"My name is Sakura Haruno," I began. "Hobbies? I have those, I guess…I like stuff…and I dislike other stuff…and my dream for the future is a secret," I concluded with a smile, staring pointedly at Kakashi-sensei. I had always wanted to try this out – in the anime and manga, it was confusing to me why all of them shared a ton of stuff about themselves when they clearly recognized that Kakashi-sensei hadn't given them anything in return.

Once again, Kakashi-sensei revealed nothing except a further crinkle of his eyes. It looked like I had sufficiently amused him for today.

_OMG Kakashi-sensei is amused by meeee! Take THAT, Yamato-Tenzo-whatever your name is!_

After that came the whole spiel about "here's a secondary genin test with a 33% pass rate, blah blah blah" and "survival test, so don't eat anything or you'll throw up." Then he disappeared again.

"Well, see you guys tomorrow," I said, standing up and stretching. "Ja ne."

And I, too, vanished, much to the surprise of the two boys.

Okay, I admit it. I hadn't actually learned that leaf-vanishing thing yet. That was a higher level technique. What I _had _done was Kawarimi – with a pocket of air on the ground. It worked just as well as the Hiraishin, over short distances, anyway. Kawarimi only worked with something actually in your line of vision. That was why I still wanted to learn the Hiraishin – you can't Kawarimi behind an opponent if he's in hiding, but you _can _teleport to a seal that you already stuck on their back.

Anyway, I ran as fast as I could while wearing my weights to the same stream, though by now I was using a faster, more dangerous part of it. I had been able to improve my distance healing technique to a greater depth both upstream and downstream (about ten meters range, by now), but that still wasn't good enough for regular combat. It wouldn't be good enough until I could project this thing further than someone could throw a kunai, at the very least.

When it got too dark to be out, I returned home and continued my exercises on endurance and genjutsu. With fuinjutsu, I had basically hit a plateau. Going any further on my own without a proper instructor would be useless – and possibly dangerous, too. Sakura really was a fast learner. So what if self-insert OC's (who still retain their knowledge of the previous world) always somehow manage to fix the regular storyline for the better? In my opinion, that's actually a good stereotype. Unless I somehow screwed this thing up even _more _and basically ended the world. Then that would be bad.

I didn't do too much conditioning outside of lugging around my regular weights. I did try practicing my medical chakra skills a little bit more – because they really were a hit-or-miss thing. It wasn't my aim – before the connection broke my accuracy was actually surprisingly good. Probably because this sort of chakra thing is instantaneous – it uses the life source of a patient (or victim) as a reference point. It isn't constrained by physical reaction time or travel delay as with most jutsu or fighting techniques. But as of now I couldn't use it in a spar with my friends. It was too dangerous.

My control simply wasn't good enough to incapacitate regularly. I mean, hello? Internal damages? Whatever I did would cause, at the very least, hemorrhaging. Severe cases of the aforementioned if I lost control (not that internal bleeding isn't serious enough by itself). This thing is actually really, really dangerous – as in, the less I pay attention, the more deadly it gets. I mean, if you wanted to punch someone hard enough to make them cough up blood, you'd have to actually try, but for me, it's the opposite: my default state is deadly and I have to try just to make sure whatever I do doesn't end up lethal.

I had a slight theory that if I messed with someone's nerves just slightly – enough to overload the brain for a short bit – I might be able to knock them out. The problem with that, was that even though Sakura's control was very good, the nervous system is pretty much impossible to navigate. If I was practicing knocking someone out, I might accidentally end up rendering them a paraplegic for the rest of their life. I couldn't practice with fish or whatever for this, either, because in this case anatomy actually matters. Normally, if I wanted to cause damage, I'd just aim at someone's torso, and whatever organ I hit wouldn't matter because they'd get hurt anyway. It's not like taijutsu or even weapons and ninjutsu where you have to carefully aim if you want to hit somewhere to cause serious damage, because you're trying to transfer all that force through all those layers of skin, muscle, fat, and bone. Medical chakra basically goes, "Screw y'all, I got a free ticket into the inside of this bastard's body, and none of y'all ain't gonna be stopping me doing whatever the hell I want in here."

Shit, I am a _really _creepy person. Please don't call the cops on me. I swear I'm not a psycho…honest…

Still, it was a bit ironic. My skills as a ninja depended on my _lack _of technique. It's like, you know how sometimes, you score higher on a test that you half-arsed and then totally failed that test that you studied your ass off for? Same here. The more control I have over my chakra, the more I'm paying attention to it, the less damage I cause.

Then again, that might actually be the _point_. I'm using medical chakra for the opposite of what it's supposed to do – save people. That might actually be why they don't let people like Naruto become medic-nin.

I can see the headlines now. _Sakura Haruno – the worst medic-nin ever! Who can also use the Hiraishin!_

I really wanted to stay up late to try drawing out basic plans on how I might position the energy transfers in each portion of such a seal (what the seal actually _is _would have to come much later) but I decided that it would be better to wake up early tomorrow anyway. Even if I knew that there was a 99% chance that Kakashi-sensei would show up three hours late again.

Although I never did figure out what he had been doing before then way back in episode four. I mean, I knew that most of the time, Kakashi-sensei was late because he lost track of time staring at the memorial stone, but since we were _meeting _there, it would stand to reason that he'd be elsewhere.

Huh.

Damn you, Kishimoto, and your plot holes.

Then again, maybe he really _was _just doing nothing but goofing off and reading his trashy novels.


	3. The Blasted Bell Test

I went to sleep early that night, after eating a big dinner, and then, after waking up early to do some stretches, ate a big breakfast. Then, after second thoughts, I packed a few energy bars to take along for Naruto and Sasuke.

I made it to the training grounds early and plopped down on the dewy grass (thank goodness I was wearing my waterproof black clothes today), made myself comfortable, and cracked open another book on advanced fuinjutsu theory (because I want the Hiraishin which is like the one OP technique that you can still spam without having Naruto level chakra, dammit). A few minutes later, Sasuke came walking in, somehow looking completely fresh at five in the morning. (That should not be possible, dammit; you're an effing preteen.) Naruto came almost right after, being more realistically still half-asleep.

"Hungry?" I asked him.

"A little," he admitted. "I want raaaamennnn…"

"Dude, ramen is just about the worst food ever for your health. Do you know how much salt and MSG goes into those cups?" I asked him.

"But it's so gooooood – " he whined, and then did a double-take. "AH! Sakura!" he screamed.

"What?"

"You're – you look – different – not that that's bad! You look really nice! I mean – I tried to find you yesterday but I couldn't see you because you left so fast – "

Ah. I remember. At this moment in time Sakura truly did outright hate Naruto and would look for ways to hit him. He must have been scared witless of her. Either he was unimaginably stupid or brave to continue obviously crushing on her. Regardless of what was the truth, it still was very, very awkward, because I'm actually a guy in a girl's body, and as far as I was concerned my brain still liked girls, even though the amount of bishies in this place was equally ridiculous as far as I could tell. Plus, these kids are twelve, and even though I'm not eighteen yet, I still feel like some massive pedo.

"It doesn't matter what I look like. We're shinobi. No one's going to care as long as we live," I said.

"Oh," Naruto said, and turned pink as his belly rumbled.

"Skipping breakfast is not healthy!" I told him, throwing an energy bar at his head.

He caught it. "But Kakashi-sensei said – "

"Look, he's probably going to be late again, and even if he's not, I'd rather throw up than go into a _survival test _on an empty stomach," I told him pointedly. Okay, if I hadn't known ahead of time, I might have fallen for it, too, but as it was, I wasn't going to spare myself any more discomfort than necessary. And one of the biggest things in my life is FOOD.

You step between me and my food and there will be hell to pay.

On the other hand, if you bribe me good enough food, I just might do whatever you want.

I waved an energy bar in front of Sasuke's face, but refused to hand it over until he asked. Sasuke, being the prideful brat he was, took nearly half an hour of watching Naruto eat happily (and unhappily read a book on chakra control I'd brought for him) to finally suck it up and ask me for food and a book.

Heh. People really do think with their stomachs.

I managed to finish that first book on fuinjutsu and get through another one on space-time ninjutsu theory before Kakashi-sensei finally showed up. It had never occurred to me how infuriating this was (after all, in the anime and manga, they tend to skip over those boring parts). But now that I was here, man, Kakashi really was starting to piss me off. He's still awesome, but he's less awesome now that he's making me effing wait for three hours. If there's one thing that pisses me off other than stealing my food it's making me wait after YOU WERE THE ONE WHO SET THE GODDAMN TIME!

I made sure to let Kakashi-sensei know it.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMA-KUN, you are my favorite person in the whole damn world, but I SWEAR to the HOKAGE MONUMENT if you are late again I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN and BURN YOUR HOUSE and EVERYTHING INSIDE OF IT _including _YOUR BOOK COLLECTION!" I crossed my arms and gave him as much of an evil stare as someone with pink hair could muster. I wasn't very successful.

"Maa, maa, so violent," he said, but at least there was a bit of a visible wince. Heh. Icha Icha. Forget people – now _that_ is the perfect hostage. "But maybe that's good. You won't pass this test unless you come at me with the intent to kill."

Of course he said that with the laziest attitude possible, but I still gulped. What if I did really have the intent to kill? With my medical chakra, I couldn't exactly control how I hurt someone – as in, I couldn't target the heart specifically – but if I just aimed it in the general vicinity of the other person's area of maximum chakra concentration (that is, the chest), I'd definitely destroy quite a few organs. At the very least, all the ones located in the torso area. Which is basically all the vitals. Even if I somehow missed and just ended up hitting the arm, I'd still rip up their muscles, even if I didn't have the accuracy to sever a tendon perfectly.

My terrible doctoring skills would definitely result in something extremely messy and difficult to heal. Basic entropy rules – it's easy to break a glass; it's hard to piece it back together. It's easy to injure someone, but the healing process takes a very long time. I knew that I had the potential to cause more damage than I could heal (severe internal injuries versus cuts and bruises?). Therefore I won't be trying any of that shit. It's like that common sense rule on poison usage - don't screw around with anything you don't have an antidote for.

Anyway, Kakashi-sensei started going through the motions for the bell test (he seemed bored normally, but he seemed especially bored here – just how many times had he explained this thing, and just how many teams had failed under his count? How young was he when he was first roped into doing this jonin sensei thing?). _You have until noon to get the bells…if you don't get a bell then you get no lunch…blah blah blah…_

I tuned him out – although I noticed that Sasuke and Naruto seemed a lot more thankful that I had given them food (ah, sweet food, god bless you) now that they realized what his real motive for "advising" them not to eat was.

"There's only two bells, though!" Naruto was yelling. "There's three of us!"

"Obviously, that's to make sure at least one of you doesn't pass," Kakashi-sensei said. "Then again, none of you might pass."

"I have a better idea," I said loudly. "How about you just pass all of us and we'll buy you a new set of _Icha Icha _after we burn your old collection. And the backups." _Hah! Take that! Your powers are no match for my superior OC Self-Insert no Jutsu!_

He lifted an eyebrow. "Nice try. I don't like the series _that _much." Although I think he was slightly impressed that I managed to find out about his one "weakness" despite never having met him before.

"Well, if there are no further questions, then…Start!"

Naruto stayed in the clearing. So did I.

Kakashi raised his eyebrow. He had expected a loud, bright orange kid like Naruto to face him head-on. He hadn't expected Sakura – who, by Academy reports, had poor physical skills but was relatively smart for her age group – to do the same.

"I'M GOING TO BEAT YOU!" Naruto declared, or something to those lines. "BLAH BLAH BLAH AND THEN I'LL BE HOKAGE BLAH BLAH BLAH FRIENDSHIP THERAPY NO JUTSU DATTEBAYO!"

Wait, scratch that last part. He doesn't use the Therapy no Jutsu until the Wave arc, I think. Or the Gaara fight. Something like that. Whatever.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow at me, as if to say, _What are you still doing here; this is Naruto's thing…_

Unbeknownst to him (or maybe not; it was hard to tell since he was so good at playing stupid even when everyone knew how smart he was) I was secretly communicating with Sasuke via genjutsu. It wasn't a very strong genjutsu, but it got the point across, since it wasn't meant to be broken, just observed.

_Hey, Uke-Sauce! If you are as dumb as Naruto, then this is a genjutsu. I am doing this to communicate with you secretly while Kakashi-sensei is being distracted by Naruto's amazing speech of awesome. Listen – we're all genin; there's no way we're going to beat a jonin no matter how amazing you think you are. I say we all gang up on him and then divvy out the bells later. Think about it – who's going to be easier to beat for those bells – a seasoned jonin, or two Academy graduates like you?_

I didn't wait for a reply; I knew he wouldn't answer, and even if he did, I wouldn't be able to hear him, since the genjutsu was a one-way communication device only. Naruto was still being loud and Kakashi-sensei was looking bored. Good. I continued to stand there like nothing was wrong. "Oh, don't mind me, sensei. I'm just chillin' here out in the sun…I tried to hide; honestly, I did. But it takes too much effort to get from here to there." Then, thinking about what I just said, I decided to sit down. "The pull of gravity is too much for me, senseiiii…" I whined as annoyingly as possible.

Which was very. Sakura had a very squeaky voice that could be put to good use in the Konoha T&amp;I department.

Maybe one day I'll introduce Ibiki to "It's a Small World." The _multilanguage_ version.

Muahahaha.

I am _so_ evil.

I continued laying out the plan to Sasuke, because honestly, Naruto at this point would not understand any of it. I was trying to rely on the fact that Kakashi-sensei didn't know any of us very well yet, even if the number and quality of the conclusions he had drawn about us based on such limited information like Academy reports and brief introductions would probably still be very impressive. Plus, it had to be unnecessarily complicated because at any point in time, Kakashi-sensei could simply use the Kawarimi to escape a tight situation.

_Phase 1: Right now, start setting kunai launching traps in the tree line. I'm trapping the ground with chakra wires. Yes, Kakashi-sensei probably knows I'm doing it. Yes, he's probably expecting traps from your end as well. Meaning he'll avoid the tree line as much as possible and he'll either avoid it or try to get Naruto stuck in my chakra web. What I'm hoping he won't expect is that you'll actually connect these wires to your kunai traps – and that they're not meant for him, but the bells. We don't have to beat him – just outmaneuver him. As he's standing here, I'm magnetizing the kunai to be attracted to this web._

I started drawing a beautiful visual diagram in the air before him, complete with stick figures and advanced equations stolen from the electromagnetism chapter of my physics textbook. I also clearly displayed how the Kawarimi – an Academy level technique that I think should be at least S-rank if used properly – would not work in this case unless you wanted to be cut to pieces by the wire web while transporting between here and The Log.

_ Phase 2: After you finish, leave a minor genjutsu to make it look like you're still hiding in the bushes. Naruto is going to start using his clones at one point. When he does, and Kakashi-sensei seems sufficiently distracted, Henge into Naruto and Kawarimi with a piece of grass or something in Kakashi's blind spot. Pretend you're still just another dumb Naruto clone and keep attacking him. I'll set off the chakra wires – he'll dodge that or use Naruto as a shield – which will also set off your kunai traps._

I also added in some very shitty animation. I could just imagine his eye twitching crazily at this point in time.

_ Phase 3: Attack him with the craziest thing you know that will further box him in. Pretend to grab at the bells like so. He'll move away from the trajectory of the kunai and you, but because of the wires, they'll curve. In this position, they'll either cut the strings of the bells, stab him, or leave you an opening to grab at the bells for real from here._

I figured that unless I let Sasuke grab the bells in the end, he'd abort the mission and go off and do his own thing. Which was very, very bad. Because as much as I wanted to see him tied to a post, begging for lunch and mercy, I'd rather we avoid that unpleasant situation. Egotistical maniacs are a pain in the ass to deal with. Honestly.

I finished the plan description not a moment too soon, either, because currently Kakashi-sensei was squatting behind Naruto…

…Aaaaand here comes the One Thousand Years of Pain.

"CHILD ABUSE! SEXUAL HARASSMENT! I'M CALLING THE POLICE!" I yelled. I felt Sasuke tugging at the chakra wires that I had let extend into the patch of forest, so I guess he was going with the plan after all. Good.

And then a bunch more stuff happened where Naruto landed in the water, and Kakashi made fun of him, and the Naruto summoned a shit ton of shadow clones, and Kakashi tried to Kawarimi with one of them…

…_and NOW!_

I flung the chakra web up into the air. Not a moment later, an extra Naruto clone found its way into our midst, albeit with a very constipated expression that didn't belong on his face at all. Kakashi switched with more Naruto clones as he tried to move out of the way, only to be driven back because of Sasuke's kunai traps. He dodged the kunai, and then I moved the chakra web so that the iron weapons wouldn't obey gravity as expected. Naruto clones were dispelling in puffs of smoke, but there were still a few around, enough to cause sufficient distraction but not enough to block my view of those bells…

Sasuke started moving toward him…any moment now…Kakashi-sensei was trapped! If he went backwards, up, or down, he'd hit a chakra web. Forward, and he'd hit the oddly floating wall of kunai. Left or right and he'd run into a conveniently positioned barricade of the remaining Naruto clones or Sasuke.

_You're trapped now, buster! No Kawarimi for you_ –

Then, just as Sasuke extended a hand towards the bells…Kakashi-sensei planted a leg in his chest and scooted backwards.

_What the heck are you doing, man? Oh, well. The chakra wires are going to cut the bells from you anyway. I could have sworn you were smart enough to know they were there – don't you know that if you touch them, you'll get a very nasty shock that will spasm your muscles long enough for Sasuke to get the bells anyway? Logically the best way to get out of this desperate situation would be to fight your way through the shadow clones, because they at least only take one hit to pop. On the other hand, this web just wrap around you once you hit the back and totally overload your nerves with electricity – surely your chakra sensing skills are strong enough that you'd recognize another set of lightning chakra when you saw it – _

_ Oh._

_ Ohhh…_

_ UH-ohhh…_

I realized five things then.

1) Shit.

2) I was such an idiot.

3) I have lightning chakra, so the webs were electrically charged.

4) Shit.

5) Kakashi-sensei also was lightning natured. And his nature transformation skills were a whole lot better than mine.

It must have only been a millisecond, but it felt like an eternity (well, more like several seconds) as my life flashed before my eyes…

Sakura's – my – hands were still tangled up in the web…

There was no way I could release it in time…

And then Kakashi hit the back of the web, hands sparking with lightning chakra, and the very nasty feeling of a more powerful source of electricity overpowering my own was all I knew before my own chakra web exploded in my face strong enough to make me black out.

That, and _Well, at least we worked together._

* * *

When I woke up, I was tied to the post.

"WHAT?" I yelled, big fat anime tears streaming down my face. "BUT KAKASHI-SENSEI-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMA-KUN! I _TRUSTED_ YOOOUUUU!"

He raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'I trusted you'? I _did _say I'd tie you to the post if you didn't get a bell by noon, right?"

"Wait, so _they _got the bells?" I asked.

Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "No, but at least I didn't knock them out before the bell rang."

I tried my best to give him a dirty glare. It didn't happen with this pink hair of mine. Geez. Freaking anime colors. "Now that's just cold."

"So no lunch for you!" He grinned. "Also, consider this revenge for threatening to burn down my Icha Icha collection."

"Waaah!" the big fat anime tears continued to cascade down my cheeks. "I'm sorry! I was only desperate to be on the same team as the most amazing ninja in the entire world ever!"

"Flattery will get you nowhere," he deadpanned.

"It's not flattery if it's true?" I tried.

"Mm-hmm..."

"By the way, sensei, did I mention that your hair complements your skin tone extremely well?" Because, you know, light colors go with other light colors, except when they're complementing dark colors, or analogous colors, or those colors on the opposite ends of the color wheel…

All right. I admit it. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing when it comes to fashion (outside of badass video game characters). Literally. This is what I do every morning:

_Hey. Clean clothes. Clean clothes good. Wearing week-old undone laundry in public bad._

"How can you still call him _sensei _so flippantly?" Sasuke cut in angrily. "We failed to retrieve the bells! We just failed – "

"No we didn't," I yawned. "It's unreasonable to expect three newly graduated Academy students to successfully tackle a jonin. If we did somehow manage to take him down, he'd be the one demoted out of shame, and then we'd have to deal with a new jonin sensei anyway."

"Then what was the point of the bells?" he shot back.

"Teamwork, duh," I said. "You're not allowed to separate the teams after they put so much effort into trying to balance them out in the first place – you know, dead last plus Rookie of the Year and whatever on the same team? He was just bluffing when he said he'd send whoever didn't get a bell back to the Academy. Either he sends all of us or none of us. But you're not allowed to test skills in particular, since the Academy exam already tested that. He's testing our application and thinking abilities, which can't be done inside a classroom setting."

His eye crinkled. "Well done. At least one of us gets it."

"Wait, so we pass?" Naruto said excitedly.

"Meh. I'll allow it. Barely," Kakashi-sensei said. "You still didn't get the bells."

"Dude, _chunin _teams can't get bells from you. What are you talking about?" I scoffed.

"Then I guess I'll just have to train you lot until you can," he shrugged, snapping his book shut. "Until you can at least pass that, your skills are still abysmal."

Wow. What a downer.

"Cool. So can you like, untie me now?" I asked, straining against the ropes like Houdini.

"Maa…no."

"WHAT? WHY?"

"Because you threatened to burn down my Icha Icha collection, and that is unforgivable," he deadpanned.

"I said I was sorry! I don't see what the fuss is all about," I pouted.

"It is too late to make amends," he said solemnly. He turned to Sasuke and Naruto. "Neither of you may give her any lunch. If you do, then I shall send you back to the Academy anyway."

"Eh? But that's mean, Kakashi-sensei!" I yelled. "We're supposed to be working together! Feeding two teammates while leaving one hungry is highly unfair and hypocritical!" Just then, I got an evil idea. I projected the genjutsu on Sasuke again. _Sasuke, hand me the energy bars. He said 'no lunch', not 'no food.' And you can't call energy bars a proper lunch! Muahahaha - _

"No food, either," Kakashi-sensei amended, seeing what I was up to.

I repeated some things that I may or may not have heard from a few of my friend's platoon mates from a military base.

They were all staring at me.

"I'm not sure if that's even anatomically possible," Kakashi-sensei scratched his chin.

"How about, you untie me now, and I won't start singing," I said sweetly.

"Sakura-chan can _sing_, too?" Naruto asked. "Wow!"

"Wanna hear me sing?" I asked. "Here goes! _IIIIT'S A SMALL WORLD AAAFTER ALL! IIIT'S A SMALL WORLD AAAFTER ALL! IIIT'S A SMALL WORLD AAAFTER ALL – _"

Kakashi-sensei threw a kunai that barely missed my arms, cutting through the ropes.

"Yes! My evil plan was a success!" I jumped to my feet, rubbing my hands together evilly. Then I spotted the bento on the ground. "My precious precious food! Never try to leave me again!"

Sasuke was staring at me with a look that said, _Who are you and what have you done with that fangirl that I used to know from the Academy?_

"She got taken over by an alter ego," I answered him, and proceeded to completely pig out. Wherever these mysterious bentos appeared from, they were totally amazing.

"That's disgusting," Sasuke said.

"On a real mission there is no time for _manners_," I said around a mouthful of rice, so it sounded a little something like "on a rl mthnn thrth no thm fhr mnth."

"...What?"

"She does have a point," Kakashi-sensei mused.

"I still don't get the point of all this," Naruto said, scratching his head. "If you wanted us to work together then why did you try to pit us against each other?"

"He was trying to see if we could work together in spite of being pitted against each other," I told him, waving my chopsticks in the air.

"Exactly," Kakashi-sensei said with that infuriating half-smile of his. "Remember this – those who break the rules are trash, but those who don't care about their comrades are even worse trash."

"_Ooooh_," I nodded sagely. I turned to Naruto and Sasuke. "This guy is _deep_."

"Well, when you're finished, Naruto and Sasuke, you may leave. We'll meet at the Hokage Tower tomorrow at seven to confirm our team assignments. Sakura, stay behind. I need to talk to you," he said.

Naruto ran off as fast as he could after finishing his meal, presumably to brag to Iruka-sensei or Ichiraku. Sasuke was, on the other hand, slowly crawling back to his emo corner. I couldn't help but think how much more he resembled a snail or a turtle, shrinking back into his shell like that.

"Well? You said something, sensei?" I asked.

"Firstly – where did you learn to make those chakra wires? Do you have a friend to help you or did you figure it out on your own?" he asked.

"I read some books," I shrugged. It was true.

"But otherwise, you self-studied," he stated.

"Mm-hmm."

"Have you tried any chakra control exercises yet?" he asked.

"Like water walking and stuff? Yeah, I've done it."

"Moving water?"

"Yep. I practice on the stream running on the other end of the cliffs." I pointed.

He lifted an eyebrow. "That's the fastest running stream for anyone to practice on."

"Well, of course I chose a really shallow pond, first, and then worked my way up from there," I said. "But yeah, I was practicing."

"Tell me, are there any other skills that I should be aware of that are _not _on your painfully thin Academy report?" he asked, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

"Well…I know a little bit of fuinjutsu. I can seal away basic things like weapons and supplies. I also know how to theoretically make exploding tags, but I don't want to try it without supervision in case I make a mistake and blow myself up. And I'm studying some more complicated theory, too, only I've never put it into practice," I told him. "I'm hoping that one day I might be able to reverse engineer the Hiraishin."

He raised an eyebrow. "You do realize if you succeed there will be a lot of foreign ninja out for your blood."

I shrugged. "Hopefully by then I'll be strong enough to take care of myself. In my opinion, it's a very good technique. It's a powerful one, but also amazingly simple, _and _it's not a ridiculous chakra drain, unlike, say, Naruto's clones."

"All right then. If you have time to self-study then go for it. But you should learn how to apply the basics in combat before you try your hand at something as complicated as fuinjutsu," he warned.

I nodded. "I've been practicing medical chakra. Sort of. I've only had a few days, maybe. I can heal cuts and bruises – you know, stuff that might happen during an average spar – but I have to get up close to control my chakra well enough to actually do anything," I said.

Kakashi-sensei raised an eyebrow. "That's what all medic-nin have to do."

"Well, I've practiced distance medical chakra, too," I admitted. "On fish."

"I take it that didn't work out so well for the fish."

"Well, I'm only ever going to be using it in an offensive sense," I told him.

"Medical chakra used _offensively_?"

"Yep." And I launched into an explanation of how medical chakra basically isn't limited by natural surface defenses, which is why it's so much more dangerous than regular taijutsu and whatnot. I also told him that it's one of the rare techniques where less control actually causes more damage. "And that's why I can't use any of it in practice. I don't have the proper control – if it's even possible – to simply knock someone out – unless the body shuts down from shock or too much internal bleeding. Anything I do will always go way past a superficial injury. If I'm super careful then I'll probably just make a super minor rupture. But I think that if I'm not in the right state of mind, say, in the heat of a fight or something, then I could seriously injure or even kill someone. The only way I could think of to knock someone out is maybe target the nerves or whatever, but even that takes too much control and I could actually cause permanent brain or nerve damage."

By the end Kakashi-sensei looked positively disturbed. I didn't blame him. This stuff was pretty creepy.

"It would be a shame if we didn't figure out how to put that to good use," he said slowly, after a long pause. "But you are right in your unwillingness to practice it even more. Keep practicing on fish if you like, but I'm going to have to explicitly forbid you from using it unless you are in a situation where you are sure there is no other option but to kill. Is that understood?"

"I was planning on that anyway."

"I'll poke around in some of my old contacts and try to find anyone else skilled in this," he offered, "but I doubt it. There are very few medic-nin that are skilled in offensive warfare; those who do don't use the medical ninjutsu specifically to fight, just heal themselves or their allies. Maybe one or two people can generate a chakra scalpel or something mid-battle, but that still requires them to get up-close. I've never actually heard of someone purposely trying to 'heal' someone else from a distance with the explicit intention to fail…You might very well be the first person ever to try something this…horrible, I suppose. There really is no other way to describe it. If you don't understand that already then I don't know another way to help you get it."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Fish."

"That still leaves you without a proper takedown method," he continued. "Naruto has enough clones, and Sasuke's taijutsu levels are good enough that they can physically subdue someone without killing him. But your most powerful attacks involve this 'offensive medical ninjutsu' which has very little distinction in restraint other than 'very serious' to 'absolutely lethal' and that won't be of much help in a 'capture and/or rescue mission', for example. How is your taijutsu?"

"Pretty good, actually. I've been using chakra weights to train myself in strength and speed, and I've been working on a few forms. I'm not sure if I can beat Sasuke, though."

"Hmmm…Genjutsu?"

"I might be able to paralyze someone for a really short moment, but they're not strong enough that someone won't be able to break it with a 'Kai!' or in extreme cases, a self-injury."

"And as you saw before, your electrical wires won't work against someone who can use lightning chakra better than you," he hummed. "Although, I might let you try it again if I teach you how to insulate yourself. That might work for our purposes. If you meet someone without any restraint you could easily get yourself killed. You have a better mastery of the basics than the boys, but in a real-life situation you still are the least prepared."

"Yeah. They really are OP," I agreed.

"Tell you what. Meet me tomorrow at the bridge at six, and I'll see if I can't get you started, since currently I think that an untrained you might even be more dangerous than an untrained Naruto. We'll head over to the Hokage tower and meet up with the boys later."

"When you say six, do you mean six, or nine?" I asked. He gave an eye-smile, but I cut him off. "Because if we agree to meet at one time, and you show up hours late, it just tells me that you either don't care about your comrades enough to value their time, or you don't care about your own commitments to them enough to show up on time," I told him. "And I think you know your own doctrine about caring about your comrades better than anyone else."

_Kakashi-sensei, you're still my favorite character, but even though you showing up late in the anime is as funny as hell, it sure isn't funny facing it myself._

He looked a bit more serious then. "All right then. I see your point. Six it is." And he vanished.

I, meanwhile, was too damn lazy to walk, since my muscles were still shaking slightly from that rather electrifying *bricked for bad pun* experience, so I just Kawarimi'd myself home. I must have looked ridiculous, appearing in odd bursts and leaving blades of grass, pockets of air, and logs in my path, but I didn't care. I just wanted to go to sleep.

And maybe eat something. I wonder if there's Hi-chew in Konoha. Mmm…Hi-chew…

* * *

**Is Sakura too OP right now? I'm trying to make my/her/our skills awesome, but not too ridiculous. My goal is mastering the simple stuff and using it in a different way.**


	4. Everything's a Personal Insult

**A/N: Thank you for the feedback from last chapter. Those of you who complained that it was unrealistic that Sakura could progress so much in only a week, I totally see your point. Anyway, here's the skill set I have in mind: **

**Taijutsu – I won't fix much because I do have a background in it. More decent than Sakura alone, but definitely not Lee status, or even Sasuke status at this point.**

**Genjutsu – I'll keep my skills relatively weak. No real combat-level ones, just simple disguises and projections. However, as long as I'm smart enough to break my own finger like Shikamaru, I can break relatively strong ones.**

**Ninjutsu – Elemental manipulation-wise, I won't be gaining much here. I'll still keep my electrical wires and maybe learn something C-rank at best. (Chidori is cool, but Sakura will only ever be strong enough to get one shot in, so, not worth it.)**

**Medical Ninjutsu – This one's hard, because it's rather counter-intuitive. The worse I am at it, the more dangerous it is. I won't be using any of it anytime soon, but it's definitely a powerful fallback.**

**Fuinjutsu – Too convenient to pass up. But I won't have anything combat-level. Hiraishin will come after Shippuden.**

* * *

That next morning I showed up at the bridge at the designated time and wondered if Kakashi-sensei had actually taken my words into account. He _had _shown up on time, after all. Then again, maybe he was just doing it this once to trick me into thinking that he was over his lateness habits, only to let me grow complacent and show up late once again at a very unexpected time just to make my ire that much worse.

It was hard to tell with ninjas.

Whatever the reason, at least today I wasn't wasting time doing nothing but sitting around waiting for him. Well, sitting around reading or doing extra training. I really did want to learn how to insulate myself from electricity. It would be useful next time I decide to hang around electrical outlets situated unwisely close to wet sinks.

The theory in itself was ridiculously simple, but it still took me most of the hour to get it right. Eventually, though, we got it down, about fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet with Naruto and Sasuke at the Hokage tower.

"I think that at this point you'll be able to use the wires safely – although I would like you to note that you shouldn't grow to depend on them. You will eventually meet someone strong enough to counter your wires, rip them apart, use them against you…"

"Yeah, about that," I said, glaring at him. There were still pink marks on my hands from yesterday, even though I tried my best to heal the minor burns. "How much voltage does this insulation thing of yours protect me from?"

He shrugged. "Depends on how much chakra you put into it. Right now, you barely have enough chakra to counteract that little zap I gave you yesterday." I winced. "It's nothing to laugh at, though – even that much can be the difference between a knockout and cardiac arrest. Unless you have Naruto-level chakra, though, you probably won't ever be able to fight someone like the Raikage, but I'd say you'll hold your own defending against an average lightning affinity user."

"But I didn't get zapped by my own electricity, did I?" I asked. "How does that work?"

"Internal regulation," he explained. "It's not exactly the lightning electricity that caused your blackout, since you already have that affinity. It's more of the rush of foreign chakra. That insulation technique I just taught you actually shields against most foreign chakra. Anyway, by itself, it's not so strong, but with your level of control…it should buy you enough time to convert that foreign chakra into something more suitable to your own chakra and prevent that overload. That you already know how to do – it's the same principle as when you break out of genjutsu."

"Ah. I see."

"Of course, you will still need to work on your physical skills a little more, since out of the entire team your reserves are the lowest," he told me. "After we finish today's mission and break for training, we'll hold basic tests for me to correctly gauge what the Academy teachers missed."

When we arrived at the Hokage Tower – five minutes early – we nearly gave the poor Sandaime a heart attack after seeing Kakashi arrive on time for once. It was almost as good as the time Naruto tried to use the Sexy Jutsu in order to permit him to keep his crazy registration photo.

Naturally, Naruto and Sasuke were extremely indignant when they found out what D-ranks really meant. Luckily for us, I let it slip to Naruto that the faster we finished, the more time we could have to train, and the more we trained, the more likely we are to get promoted so that we can do higher-level missions. I'll spare you the details of me describing us complaining about those child labor type missions, but one hundred Kage Bunshin later, and we had finished weeding that garden in record time.

Thank god for Naruto's OP-ness.

"Do either of you guys know any chakra control exercises?" he asked Naruto and Sasuke. Both of them shook their heads. _Well, I suppose it's nice that he's teaching them this instead of waiting until the Zabuza arc, _I thought. In any event, that let to Kakashi-sensei describing the importance of not wasting any chakra and then forcing Naruto and Sasuke to go climb trees without using their hands.

"How come Sakura doesn't have to do it?" Sasuke grunted.

"She already can," Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "Apparently her chakra control is just that good." Sasuke shot me an ugly look, and I rolled my eyes.

"The more chakra you have the harder it is to control it," I told him. "Stop taking every single damn cotton-picking little thing as a personal insult. And just so you know, it's easier if you test the wood first to see how much chakra you'll need before actually running up the tree."

Sasuke snorted, but as he went to the tree I saw him plant his foot carefully against the root first, just like Naruto. Kakashi-sensei didn't comment.

"Let's start with taijutsu only. Attack me," he said.

Now, normally that wasn't the way I fought. Even back home I always waited for the other person to make the first move so I could gauge a bit of their style and strength. That was just the way I worked. But here, I knew why Kakashi-sensei was making me attack first – it was for the same exact reason I normally held back. So I did.

If he seemed a bit surprised then he did a good job at hiding it, because he managed to counter everything I did even without the Sharingan. And I knew for a fact that I was having Sakura do things that weren't covered in the basic Academy taijutsu – my personal style happens to be, "Whatever works, works, GG."

Fighting in Sakura's body had its advantages and disadvantages. Aside from the fact that she was a girl and therefore didn't have to shield against crotch hits, she was also smaller and more flexible. Due to her frame, I was faster, but unfortunately she also didn't have the endurance that I wished she had. Even though I was increasing my strength through chakra packing, and had temporarily pulled the chakra from my weights so that I was faster, I was still clearly outclassed. It was obvious that Kakashi-sensei was simply going easy on me, and would simply increase the level of his skill accordingly to constantly keep us at a tie.

After a few minutes, he called for a stop. "Well, your physical strength and skills exceed expectations, at least." Not that the expectations had ever been much in the first place. "The chakra-enhanced punches would actually put you at the middle of your class in terms of raw strength – but your speed is still only barely above average. Keep using your weights – they are working very well for you if you've only been using them for a short while. Now go climb a tree and do as many upside-down sit-ups as you can. If you impress me sufficiently I might teach you a new technique."

"Might or will?" I wheedled.

He gave me a short look. "Might."

I picked a tree relatively far away from where Naruto and Sasuke were working so that Kakashi-sensei could work with them on his own time. Sasuke, naturally, was a little further ahead than Naruto, and it was clear that he might finish climbing the tree by the end of the day. Naruto might, too, if he decided to use clones. I wondered when Kakashi-sensei would tell him about that. Maybe he wouldn't, or maybe he would. Sasuke's ego was still extremely fragile at this point, but breaking it too fast all in one go would do more harm than good. It was best to slowly wiggle him out of that shell.

Eventually, Kakashi-sensei came back to my tree and ordered me down. I disconnected from the branch and put a little chakra in my feet to soften the blow. Heh. Sometimes it pays to be Sakura, I guess.

"Are you ever going to tell Naruto about using Kage Bunshin to learn?" I asked him.

"When Sasuke isn't around," he said. As predicted.

"So…technique?" I asked.

"Would you like a genjutsu or ninjutsu?" he asked me.

"Mmmm…ninjutsu, please," I said. "I can study genjutsu on my own time, and I'll volunteer at the hospital to help control my medical chakra."

"That makes things easier for me," he shrugged. "Lightning natured. I'm a bit surprised by that, to be honest. I would have pegged you for a earth or water type. When did you find it out again?"

"A few days ago," I told him.

"And you learned how to charge your chakra wires that quickly?" he asked.

"Well, if you pretend a wire is like a piece of metal, then it's not that hard, actually," I said. "I had to do a little bit of math to determine how to spin it, though."

"Hmm. Well, you understand that at this point I won't be able to go above C or D-rank for you because of your abysmal reserves. Once the boys get past that initial wall they'll be able to advance really quickly, but I'm afraid you'll have to do it the slow way just like everyone else. Just a warning so you know what to expect."

"I'm not Sasuke, sensei. I can take the truth," I shrugged.

"All right. That just makes things easier for me. In any event, this jutsu is called the Lightning Blade. It's not exactly as impressive as it sounds, but it gets the job done." He showed me the seals and demonstrated it for me. "As you can see, it simply releases a short burst of chakra. The more chakra you put into it, the wider the range. The longer you feed it your chakra, the longer it stays. Using your control, you can change the shape of the blade. With your current levels I don't think you'll be able to hold it for any more than a few seconds, but it'll be good for practice with improving your reserves, anyway."

"Got it." I flashed through the seals, and gave it a little test.

It was, shall we say, slightly embarrassing. It wasn't even a blade. More like a needle.

"Chakra senbon?" I tried.

He shrugged. "If your medical training taught you the right spots to place it, it can still be lethal. Just keep it up. The useful thing about this technique is that even if your glance is only superficial, it will still give your opponent a nasty shock. More chakra, and you can knock them unconscious. Too much, of course, and you'll just kill them, but at least with this there's more distinction between 'sparring tap' and 'deadly hit' than your medical chakra."

"Assuming I ever build up that much chakra."

"Well, that, too."

"Gee, thanks."

I was stuck in the clearing for the rest of the afternoon sending mini sword-shaped lightning bolts in the air. Well, pocketknife-shaped, at least. I couldn't really tell; they tended to fizzle out extremely quickly. I was a bit pissed off with myself, to be honest. Kakashi-sensei had been able to shape his chakra into an at least three-foot-long katana so effortlessly that it hurt. On the other hand, both Sasuke and Naruto had been able to make it to the top of their respective trees by the time the sun was setting. It was too late to start anything now, but Kakashi-sensei advised them both to continue practicing their chakra control. He'd start them on water-walking the next day and that was sure to take a much longer time. Even longer when they transitioned to moving water.

And so my life continued. D-ranks in the morning, lunch break, and then team training in the afternoon.

At first dealing with Naruto was a bit awkward because at this point he still had that massive puppy crush on Sakura…and, you know, I'm a guy on the inside. I'm straight! I don't swing that way! Except I'm a girl, so does that make me a lesbian? I'm so confused.

SHIT I just remembered. Lee was in love with Sakura, too.

GOD DAMN EFFING SHIT Lee, you're an amazing person with a great sense of sportsmanship, and your general kindness, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, and willingness to forgive and make new friends despite the incredibly shitty lot you were assigned in life…but there is something extremely socially inept with the way you try to pick up girls.

Although Sakura looks more like a boy here despite the pink hair, so maybe I'll be able to sneak past him somehow.

Where was I again? Oh, yes. Twelve year olds in love. I had to make it clear to Naruto multiple times that I was becoming serious about being a ninja and didn't have time for dates.

Shit, this is hard. I haven't been twelve for four years.

But Naruto was so starved for affection that he had been willing to settle for friends – a massive leap from how Sakura used to treat him – so I guess that was okay. Given Naruto's short attention span, it didn't take long for us to start working together well. When he wasn't practicing his chakra control exercises, he was going to me for help on his abysmal genjutsu skills.

Sasuke, on the other hand…was a way different story.

I should have known from the very start that being shown almost preferential treatment by Kakashi-sensei would alienate him even more. (Almost. Kakashi-sensei was probably using me to screw with Sasuke and teach him "the value of teammates" or something like that, the sneaky bastard.) He seemed to be able to tolerate Sakura as long as he looked down on her. Now that I was beginning to surpass him, in his eyes – which was completely untrue; I simply had a better mastery of the basics, while he had the potential to go much further because of his bloodline – I was competition.

Sasuke was a competitive person, but he hated competition. He only liked fights he could win. He loved a challenge – especially the close ones – but he would only enjoy them if he could end up on top.

Learning to walk on water while a girl he thought was useless and annoying was already beginning her first ninjutsu was a great personal insult to him.

Even after all the "Dammit, Sasuke! Stop taking everything as a personal insult!"-s I threw at him.

Ah, shinobi politics. The wonderful art of passive-aggressive bitching.

If he had stepped back from his pride a little bit he would see that he was still ahead of me in many ways. He already had the Giant Dragon Fireball Thingy Whatsit no Jutsu as well as a few others. I was barely starting my first and my progress was painfully slow.

Kakashi-sensei was still forcing me to learn how to make stronger Lightning Blades. And I was still being very, very pissed off at my slow progress. He tried to make me feel a little better about myself by pointing out the advantages of having a short-lived blade – no one would be able to see it until I wanted to use it, so with my control I would be able to hold the chakra back in reserve until I wanted to let it out. Still, though, it was very disappointing, being completely winded after only making one barely passable knife.

Spark. Zap.

"EFFING SON OF A – "

Kakashi-sensei rolled his eyes and quickly cast a muting genjutsu around us to preserve Sasuke and Naruto's innocence. Since they were still twelve, you know.

" – AND NINETY THREE CANISTERS OF CHEESE – "

He waited patiently for the ground to stop cracking open with my power stomps.

" – ON A SANDWICH!"

"Mm-hmm…" he said. "Now if your little temper tantrum is over with, again. I have to check on the boys."

I mumbled angrily and gave the burnt patch of ground a dirty look before I returned to making not-so-massive blade-shaped sparks.

This bullshit was little more than a giant dick-measuring contest.

"You know, this very frustrating technique is actually related to many more powerful ones that will be a piece of cake once you master this one," he said. "This is just the very start of lightning manipulation. If you can attain a certain size of blade then you know you'll have enough energy to move on to nearly any other jutsu you wish."

"_If _I can get there," I said sourly.

"Do the technique about a thousand more times, and maybe you might," he shrugged.

I fake sniffled and began killing grass again.

When I became too drained to attempt any more jutsu without causing serious injury and/or death to myself, Kakashi-sensei started putting me back on physical training, because, apparently, chakra reserves increase proportionally to your muscle development up until a certain point. I think he was just getting a kick out of hearing me swear at him. I've heard that if you censor the profanity the remaining statements are actually extremely entertaining in a most nonsensical way.

I really don't remember how many more mornings of D-ranks we did before Sasuke and Naruto finally managed to get their chakra control levels up to a passable standard in Kakashi-sensei's eyes. Neither of them seemed so excited at the prospect at being allowed to learn a new ninjutsu anymore after all those days of hearing me scream and cry at blackened circles in the field.

Naturally, Sasuke took to his new fire jutsu like a duck to water, since he already had a few under his belt already. Naruto had a little bit more trouble getting the right seals and chakra in place, but once he did, the village just received a new mission of replanting five large trees. Needless to say, Kakashi-sensei starting being a little more careful in training Naruto after that. He had this little glint in his eye that I did not like.

"Sasuke, spar with Sakura for now," he ordered out of the blue. "I need to supervise Naruto's training in an isolated location to make sure he doesn't knock over the Hokage Tower next or something." He paused, and shot Sasuke a nasty look. "No ninjutsu or any potentially fatal attacks, got it?"

He grunted. Kakashi-sensei took that as agreement.

When Kakashi-sensei had taken Naruto to a slightly more damage-tolerant location to train, Sasuke turned to me. "Well?"

"You attack first," I countered, not really trusting him.

I instantly regretted it. Holy chicken burrito in a toaster, he was fast. Even with all my muscle memory from home I could just barely keep up with him. It should be illegal for someone to move that fast. Damn ninjas!

And at this point, he was still slower than Lee, too.

Again: damn ninjas!

If Sakura had clearly been weaker than him, he would have gone easy because she wouldn't have been worth his time. As it was, I was a threat to his standing. And so he was going to fight tooth and nail to prove himself superior.

God effing dammit. I totally thought I was making things better.

"You hit harder than I expected," he commented out of the blue as he blocked a side punch. "How are you doing it? You don't have the muscle and you aren't moving fast enough to generate that sort of force."

Should I tell him? Is this going to be a really bad idea? Or will he get even pissier for at me for not telling him…hmmm…I hate dealing with emotionally unstable people. "Chakra packing," I finally answered. "I'm not sure how to describe it, though. I just do it. You can look up some tips for chakra control in the library, though."

But he didn't really show any negative response. "Figures it has something to do with chakra control. What are you planning to do?"

"What?" I asked, ducking and twisting under his leg. Damn, Sakura's spine can bend to insanely unreal levels. I never remembered being able to do this. I guess it pays to be a twelve-year-old girl, sometimes.

"Our team is very weird," he said.

"Okay…I think that was apparent…since you're on it and all…"

"If you think about it," he said, ignoring my little sarcastic jab (I guess that was another thing that unnerved him – Sakura had basically gone from idolizing him to making him the butt of every witty statement – and for someone used to excessive amounts of simpering and praise this must have been an abrupt change), "Naruto is currently best suited for taijutsu because he can't really do anything else. But he might actually be best at ninjutsu. When Naruto destroyed all those trees with a C-rank technique, Kakashi-sensei mentioned that it was because he had a sort of bloodline limit that gave him a huge amount of chakra reserves. On the other hand, I'm the best at ninjutsu, currently, but if I develop the Sharingan I'll be the best at genjutsu. And you seem to be fairly well-versed in genjutsu, but with your strength and flexibility you might be the best at taijutsu."

Huh. I never thought of it that way before. That actually makes a lot of sense. I decide to reward him a little bit. "Well, I'm studying medical ninjutsu and sealing, too."

He raised an eyebrow. "Sealing?"

"I won't ever be a specialist, but one of my goals in life involves sealing," I told him.

His eyes narrowed as I just barely missed hitting his face. "Does it involve space-time ninjutsu?" he asked. "I always see you reading books on those subjects. Even more than medical ninjutsu." Kick. Ankle grab. Twist. Backflip.

"…Maybe." Stupid smart people.

"What are you trying to do? Create some space-time seal?" he asked, swiping at my knee.

"I shall invoke my right to remain silent," I replied, lifting my knee out of the way of his hands and aiming it at his chin. He jumped back, twisted to the side, and aimed at my ribs, but I was already there to block him.

"What do you mean, 'my right to remain silent'?" Sasuke asked. "What's that?"

Oh, right. Konoha, despite the pretty coloring, is still a military dictatorship.

"Never mind. I'm more interested in medical ninjutsu. I don't think anyone should specialize in simply taijutsu unless they also have some good backup plans. It's very risky getting up close and involving yourself with hand-to-hand combat when a cheap shot from a distance can do the same exact thing, right?" I said. "Everyone should be trained in taijutsu so that if you do get involved with another person you're not immediately dead, of course, but relying on it altogether is stupid."

No offense to Gai-sensei or Lee, because they're crazy and it works for them (not really), but Sakura plus taijutsu? Bitch, please.

"Makes sense," and he almost gave me a rather painful blow to the stomach, except I grabbed his wrist and twisted it, forcing him to use his legs to pull back. It occurred to me that Sasuke got more talkative the more distracted he was by something, like an interesting fight, or talking about the subject of fighting. It was obvious that this poor soul was afflicted with the serious disease of monologuing-itis. "But what are you planning to do with yourself? Fuinjutsu is very hard to use so you won't be able to apply it for several years even if you're good at it. And you don't have the chakra reserves to get that great at ninjutsu. Unless you're planning to become a genjutsu specialist."

"Genjutsu is helpful enough if you want to screw with people, but there are very few genjutsu that a self-inflicted injury can't solve and they all involve bloodlines or special tools of some sort," I told him. "Useful tool, but very unreliable for a normal person like me."

"Well, if you're not strong enough for ninjutsu, and taijutsu is too dangerous, and genjutsu is unreliable, and fuinjutsu is too hard, then what will you be?" Sasuke asked. "A weapons mistress?"

"Also requires getting up close and depends on the strength of a throwing arm. And a strong enough wind ninjutsu, a nice good rock wall, or a good enough electrical field as I did with my chakra wires will screw it up anyway," I said. "I already told you, I'm doing medical ninjutsu."

"I'm talking about an offensive skill," he said.

"I know," I said. "Just imagine the amount of damage a shitty doctor can cause."

He was silent for a few moments as he parried a few more of my attacks.

"I see your point…" Block. Jab. Counter. "But don't you have to get up close to them anyway?"

"The further you way you are, the less control you have over your medical chakra," I explained. "The less control you have over medical chakra, the more damage you can do. Imagine a bunch of foreign chakra just running around loosely in your internal organs without a good directing force. You won't even have bone or muscle to defend yourself with."

"You've tried it?" he asked.

"On fish," I admitted. "I'm not allowed to use it against other people or in a standard spar, for obvious reasons. There really is little difference between serious injury and death. Which will be bad for a simple search-and-arrest mission, for example. But that's all right because my weak ninjutsu skills make up for that – my ninjutsu won't kill, but it will incapacitate."

"I see." He was contemplative.

We sparred for a little bit longer, and it seemed like he was toning down a bit because he was no longer using all his strength to try to beat me. I didn't personally care about his feelings in particular but I knew that it would be for everyone's best interests in the long run if he didn't go off trying to blow up the world and all that lovely stuff.

"…Do you think you could teach me?" he suddenly asked.

Well. This was a surprise. Sasuke asking for a favor, willingly, for once. I didn't know how to respond to that, exactly. On one hand, it was a good thing, because it meant he was opening up – he was valuing my skill rather than hating me for being good at something that he wasn't. That was a huge step in getting over his petty sense of jealousy and perfectionism, and eventually he might actually reverse the trauma his brother's delightfully misguided actions had caused him. Sasuke was still my teammate, currently, so he deserved to know what I could do, and we would discuss it all with Naruto in front of Kakashi-sensei later.

On the other hand, I didn't want to teach him medical ninjutsu of all things. One, that's _my _invention and _my _specialty, bitch, and you ain't having none of it! Future doctor/lawyer/engineer here! And two, I didn't trust him not to turn against his friends and use this medical ninjutsu shit against us yet. That's even scarier than him having the Chidori. Just because I'm here doesn't automatically guarantee that he'll become all rainbows and smiles immediately.

I can imagine just exactly how it'll play out already.

"I'm not allowed to teach," I finally told him sternly. "But if you like, we can work together on genjutsu. I'm good at breaking out of them so you'll have a good test subject for practicing them before you want to try your hand at someone like say, Kakashi-sensei. Naruto needs help on it anyway."

"It's all right. I probably don't have the right chakra control anyway," he dismissed me, and I let out a slight sigh in relief. "But your arrangement for the genjutsu might work. I am interested in your fuinjutsu work but I don't think it will be of much use to me. I have better things to train for than solve those symbols."

…I didn't offer the fuinjutsu stuff. Dammit, Sasuke! Hands off! The Hiraishin is mine, you hear? Well, it was Naruto's dad's…and I think Tobirama invented it…so technically it's theirs…and Naruto's…if he wants…

Ah, whatever. Credit goes to the reverse-engineer-er. Hey. Naruto can make like, a billion shadow clones and fire off a gazillion Rasengans and not get tired. Sasuke's eyes will eventually morph into the biggest cheat code in all of ninja history. (Amaterasu is just a cheat code for ninja napalm, yo.) I say Sakura deserves something OP, too. Like running fast and literally giving people heart attacks.

Poor Kakashi-sensei. Kishimoto always left him behind. Such is the power of the Worf Effect.

Speaking of Kakashi-sensei…the sneaky bastard was probably having Sasuke and me work together to smooth out our rocky relationship of one-sided one-upmanship. Because when he came back with Naruto in tow (Naruto was looking extremely smug; had Kakashi-sensei taught him how to use the clones to learn faster?) he had that crinkle in his eye, like his diabolical plan had recently succeeded.

"Well?" he asked. "How was your spar?"

"It was adequate," Sasuke said. "We had a very interesting discussion about our current team dynamics." He then proceeded to explain his proposals for our team specialties – keeping in mind my reminder that the other two should still be well-rounded in defending against things that _weren't _their assigned skill set – while I dumbed it down so Naruto could understand.

Kakashi-sensei's eye crinkled, in a rather calculating way. Suddenly I had the feeling that this man wasn't the lovable, eccentric, funny teacher that the anime always showed.

"You three have all worked very hard during this time. I think I might give you a little reward tomorrow. Such as, an upped mission ranking. We'll see."

Naruto was cheering like a maniac, and Sasuke looked pretty pleased, but for some reason my smart brain decided to overtake my funny brain at that point and become the most pessimistic little downer ever.

C-rank. Kakashi-sensei probably didn't know about Tazuna specifically, but I knew that this C-rank wasn't as much of a reward as it was his way to "test" us.

I was an idiot. I should have known that Kakashi-sensei would be a master at something like this. His enemies always underestimated him even after knowing all of the rumors about him. Why shouldn't it be the same here? He was so used to wearing that figurative mask of appearing harmless that it was so easy to forget, sometimes, that he had probably killed his first man as soon as he got that wartime Chunin designation at age six.

He could trick a man out of his home and livelihood – even if the other had been warned about him beforehand.

Of course, being the special person I am, I couldn't help but think:

_Damn, that's really cool._


	5. The Way of the Muffle-Hn

I had made sure to privately brief Naruto ahead of time in showing the proper decorum while dealing with a foreign client. As in, no jumping up and down, no yelling, and overall no behaving like an idiot. "In fact, you know what? Just keep your mouth shut for as long as you possibly can unless there's something life-threatening in the way."

Naturally, about two minutes later, Naruto was squirming in his seat.

"But don't forget to breathe!" I admonished him, once I realized he was turning blue.

"But Sakura-chan we're about to go on a C-rank and we're leaving the village and I'm really really excited so can we – "

"Naruto, look at how quiet the Hokage is being. If you want to be the Hokage you have to practice being quiet. If you're always talking you'll never be able to listen to what other people are saying, and if you never listen to other people, you'll never know if they need help, or if they have good ideas, and so on," I said quickly, praying to God-Kami-Jashin-Whatever that this would work.

It did. For another ten minutes.

"Sakura-chan Sakura-chan Sakura-chan Sakura-chan Sakurachansakurachansakurachansakurachansakurachan - "

"Naruto, I have an idea," Sasuke suddenly cut in. "You're allowed to talk, but you have to stop every fifteen seconds and let someone else say something. If they respond then you can converse with them. If no one answers, you have to keep silent for the next five minutes."

It worked a little bit better. Not much, but at least Naruto was no longer turning blue.

_If I even manage to get back home, I should try this on my really annoying younger cousins, _I thought. _Thanks, Uke-Sauce!_

Finally, Tazuna showed up, and whatever excitement Sasuke and Naruto had about their first C-rank was completely dashed by the image of the old bridge builder. I couldn't help but feel so bad for them. I probably would have felt similar disappointment had I not known what to expect beforehand.

"You're having a buncha kids guard me?" he slurred throatily. "I paid for a C-rank, not weaklings like the pink one – "

_WHAP_

"Sakura, killing the client is a bit counterintuitive," Kakashi-sensei said, holding me back by the wrist.

"_CALL ME A WEAKLING AGAIN AND I'LL SHOW YOU WHO'S THE WEAKLING YOU OLD – _"

"Sorry, Sakura-chan is a very strong and proud kunoichi," Naruto was laughing apologetically.

" – _SO YOU CAN GO SHOVE A CAN OF SMELLY FISH WORMS FILLED WITH INDUSTRIAL WASTE UP YOUR BIG HAIRY SEXIST ARSE – _"

Hey, if I'm going to be stuck as a girl in this place, it's only fair that I make things as equal-opportunity as possible, right?

"_ – AND SPREAD YOUR EMASCULATED DISEMBOWELED CASTRATED MARINATED REMAINS – _"

Even some of the ANBU were wobbling at their posts.

" – _FLYING SQUIRRELS AND VELOCIRAPTORS WITH NAPALM – "_

Naruto and Sasuke were both staring at me with undisguised fascination, while Kakashi-sensei just looked at the ceiling like he didn't know we were here.

" _– ON A SANDWICH!_"

I don't quite remember what I said in between those gaps, but I remember after the fact that even the Third Hokage seemed particularly appalled, and more than one adult in the vicinity had clapped their hands over the ears of their child.

Ahah. Heh. After I had just lectured Naruto on good behavior in front of the client, too. And then Naruto was the one who had to apologize for me. Embarrassing, much.

Kakashi-sensei declined to comment.

Iruka-sensei was looking at me like I had just swooped in through the window on an alien spacecraft decorated with PewDiePie's face, bearing a massive red flashing neon sign saying "HOLA SOY ASIAN" in glittering Las Vegas marquee text, while simultaneously doing something that suspiciously looked like unholy union of the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance and eating a super-size ultra-grilled Chili Philly Cheese Steak Portobello Shiitake Mushroom Burger on a Denny's Grand Slam Sandwich between two pieces of fried chicken.

I looked back at him like I was doing nothing of the sort.

Iruka-sensei looked back at Kakashi-sensei like he was asking, "What in the name of solidified high fructose corn syrup did you do to the girl who used to be one of my most 'well-behaved' students when she wasn't fighting Ino over Sasuke?"

Kakashi-sensei continued to decline to comment.

Tazuna's eye twitched.

"Hatake, you might want to review the rules of client interaction with your student…s," the Hokage said, emphasizing the belated addition of the "s".

I didn't know if that belated addition was because I was the only one who needed to "review the rules of client interaction" or because I was so damn amazing that I had completely overshadowed Naruto and Sasuke completely, almost tricking the Hokage into forgetting that they ever existed. I decided to go with the latter reason, as it was clearly the more reasonable one…

But then I realized that everyone inside the room was still giving me The Look – not The Look as in, _hmmm, what a fine specimen of female that is_ – I mean, The Look as in the one I get when I come home and say "Mommy, I got a B+ on my test, kthxbai!"

Clearly, there was only one thing left to do.

ATTORNEY NO JUTSU, ACTIVATE!

"I understand the rules of client interaction completely well, Sandaime-sama," I said as respectfully as possible (barring the addition of several other unnecessary Japanese suffixes to his title, because that was reserved only for David Bowie – I mean, Kakashi-sensei-sama-senpai-san-sama-kun). "However, let me redirect your attention to the precedent case of _Hatake vs. The State of Konoha_ – with its timeless verdict, 'Those who break the rules are trash, but those who do not care about their comrades are worse than trash.' While my actions were inappropriate in this situation, I was only doing so to protect the honor of my comrades on my team, who were being referred to as weaklings, and the honor of my comrades in the State of Konoha as a whole, which was being challenged when our client insinuated that you were assigning an unqualified team to him out of greed, dishonesty, or incompetence. Therefore I plead not guilty."

Naruto had stars in his eyes, like he was in love with me or something (oh, wait, he was). Kakashi-sensei looked torn between collapsing in laughter and burying his face inside his hands. The Hokage was stroking his non-invisible – in-invisible – double negative, so visible! – beard in deep thought. Tazuna was looking between the Hokage and me incredulously, like he was asking, _Are you serious? Are you SERIOUS? _And I think Iruka-sensei was about to undergo some very important infiltration mission where he would be posing as a mime, because he was doing a very good silent imitation of what I believe to be a goldfish.

Then, out of my left ear, I heard a noise that sounded like a car engine sputtering, only there were no cars in Konoha.

Hmmm…

Oh, right. It was Sasuke.

I think he was trying too hard not to laugh and utterly failing. Either that, or he was afflicted with a rather common genetic disorder found commonly in the Uchiha Clan, called Constipation Face. (Note: While Emo-ness also features prominently in the Uchiha Clan, it is a psychological disorder rather than genetic, and may crop up in any anime male also tagged with the "Cool Factor." Neither should be confused with The Way of the Hn, which is a tradition and a lifestyle choice, not a disease.)

"Maa…shall we head out?" Kakashi-sensei said quickly, in order to diffuse any tension in the room. Or maybe he was just bored of me and my long but totally hilarious side-remarks.

So we found ourselves out at the gate, walking along with Tazuna back to Wave.

And let me tell you one thing: Tazuna. Was. SLOW.

S-L-O-W Slow.

Old civilian man…versus trained shinobi. How the heck did Kakashi-sensei stand these types of missions? He was doing A-ranks before he got stuck with _us_, right?

Oh, wait. Book. Duh.

"Kakashi-sensei, do you have a book I can borrow?" I asked. "I want to practice reading and fighting at the same time to look cool just like you."

Without pausing he reached inside his pocket and threw a thin little book at me. I was excited, until I turned it over and read the cover: _The Konoha Client Interaction Rulebook._

…

Oh, ha-ha! Ha! Very funny!

I pouted (hey – I'm a twelve-year-old girl now, so I'm _allowed _to pout) but started reading anyway since there was nothing better to do. It took me a bit of trial and error to figure out how to walk, watch out for potential danger, _and _read at the same time, and even then I wasn't perfect. How the hell did Kakashi-sensei do that with _one _eye!

WAAAH! SO OP!

Being the type of person I am, I get easily distracted, if you haven't noticed. Man, I am glad that I'm a Naruto ninja, not a real ninja. Because, you know. Bright orange jumpsuits and everything. Bitch, please. Black trench coats look so much cooler. Of course, the sun was hot out, but because of chakra cycling, I regulated my own body temperature. It's another random jutsu that I came up with, because I can't think of any other way Konoha shinobi – a.k.a. people in the Land of Eternal Summer or some crap like that (how the hell is this place always sunny, anyway? It must be Naruto's fault) – would survive in this weather wearing dark blue sweat suits and flak jackets of all things.

_Ooh, butterfly… _I thought after about two lines of "Code 0.0.i. A shinobi must always blah blah de blabbidy blah."

_Ooh, tree… _I thought after about another two lines of "Code 1. . A shinobi must never blah blah de blabbidy blah."

_Ooh, suspicious puddle out in the middle of the road even though it hasn't rained for weeks and there is no proper irrigation system or sprinklers that I know of in this area that may or may not be hiding two chunin-level enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist… _I thought after about another two lines of –

Wait!

Aw, FAHCK!

It's two chunin-level enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist!

Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei!" I said loudly. "Watch what I can do!" I powered my feet with lightning chakra and walked along the road with my arms stretched out like I was flying – and let me tell you, it was harder than it sounded because of those awful blue monstrosities they call sandals are made of _rubber_, "I'm the Thunder God! Wooo~!"

"Is she for real?" Tazuna asked.

And then I may or may not have "accidentally" stepped into the puddle hiding the two enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist while my feet were still coated with electricity.

_BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. CLAP – _I mean, _ZAP!_

ZAP!

I said ZAP!

I'm not making references to any really annoying songs ruined by the radio that I am extremely embarrassed to have stuck in my head, at all! What are you talking about?

Anyway…

Yeah. So I basically shocked the Demon Brothers in their hiding spot before they had a chance to leap at Tazuna. One moment I was splashing around in a puddle with electricity literally stuck to my feet and the next, there were two almost unconscious chunin-level ninjas at my feet.

I say almost because my lightning chakra was still relatively weak, and water actually isn't a very good conductor of electricity unless you have salt dissolved in it or something, which these guys unfortunately didn't.

Well, they were unconscious _now_, after I jumped on their heads.

"Sakura…?" Sasuke was asking, staring at the amusingly animated pile of steaming bodies by my feet. Their hair was even stuck up all weirdly.

"It hasn't rained for weeks. There aren't any hoses or sprinklers around. We have not passed anyone or heard of anyone leaving that gate recently, so there was no one here to dump any water. Besides, the puddle shows no signs of evaporation or drying, despite this being a dry and hot day, and there is no brown squiggly thing around the edges like most puddles would have when being absorbed into a dry _dirt_ road," I concluded, patting myself on the back for being a total genius. Even though I probably would have fallen for it, too, if I hadn't known ahead of time. Who needs an OP Sharingan thingy whatsit anyway, when you have the OC Self-Insert no Jutsu?

HAH! FEAR ME! FEAR ME AND MY APPARENT BUT ACTUALLY PROBABLY NOT QUITE THERE GENIUS! That's right, Sasuke - kiss your role as the most observant person on the team other than the jonin sensei himself _goodbye!_

"Demon brothers. Two chunin-level enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist," Kakashi-sensei identified them as Naruto and Sasuke were trussing them up. "Tazuna, why would there be two chunin-level enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist after you?"

"Uhh…"

"What have you been keeping from us?"

"Uhh…"

And then I sat and listened as Tazuna came up with a sob story and blah blah blah about how Gato had taken over Wave and stuff (despite not being a ninja, he seemed especially proficient at using the Guilt-Trip no Jutsu). And then Naruto started crying about how we just absolutely _had _to go help them, and then somehow along the way Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke, and I got roped into the mess.

Oh, and Kakashi-sensei used one of his summons to make sure the update got back to Konoha because, you know, military etiquette. Don't put yourselves in unnecessary danger and all. Also, we were leaving two chunin-level enemy missing-nin from the Hidden Mist tied to a tree. Who knows how long it might take until the next retrieval team came around. They might escape and cause trouble. Or, you know, since Kakashi-sensei also rigged the wires with some electricity to shock them every time they tried to wiggle around or cut through it with metal tools, they might just dehydrate to death there. (Or actually, they might starve first, because they're water types, so they could make jutsus for that, I suppose.)

Damn, I wanna learn that!

"No, Sakura. I am never letting you near pointy objects or sugar ever again."

"But I'm a _ninja _– "

"Don't care."

A bunch of walking later, we finally made it to the spot where we were supposed to get into a fight with Zabuza. And then Kakashi-sensei would keel over from chakra exhaustion. Now, while this was totally cool plot-wise, (because it was back when Kishimoto was still trying to keep the characters real instead of setting the character OP levels up OVER 9000 with meteors and shit flying everywhere. No making someone too damn powerful, yo. Kakashi-sensei needs a real weakness like "having naturally low chakra reserves," not, "being beat up when faced with an ultra-powerful villain so that Naruto can look better when he comes in and saves the day due to the Worf effect!"), I didn't _actually _want that to happen now that I was here to prevent it.

And it's totally because I'm a good person who just wants to fix this world, not because I'm a lazy butthole who doesn't want to have to carry Kakashi-sensei all the way back to Wave.

I'm _serious_! Stop laughing at me!

Hey! Kakashi-sensei might be a skinny guy, but he's still, like, six feet tall. There's only so much weight you can shave off a guy who's six feet tall and still keep him in healthy, working condition. Plus most of that skinny is muscle anyway. And then here's Sakura, who, despite having worked with weights for all this time, is still depressingly weak compared to everyone else on goddamn Team 7.

I am _not _a lazy butthole!

Anyway, Naruto threw the kunai at an "innocent fluffy little bunny," Zabuza comes soaring in out of nowhere on his Big Effing Sword (heh heh) like the giant showboater he was, yadda yadda yadda.

"Oh my god!" I yelled. "It's Zangetsu!"

"…Muffle Zangetsu? Muffle," Zabuza paused in his showboating to ask.

"Ignore me! I meant to say, Kubikiribocho!" I corrected myself quickly.

"Don't worry, guys," Kakashi-sensei said. "I, too, conveniently wear a mask that covers my mouth, so that I may speak the language of a fellow Muffler when he comes by."

"Muffle Muffle," said Zabuza.

"Muffle?" Kakashi-sensei asked.

"Muffle Muffle lightning nature Muffle Muffle electricty Muffle he's standing on an iron sword, Kakashi-sensei Muffle Muffle," I whispered.

"Muffle Muffle rubber shoes and non-conductive grip Muffle," said Kakashi-sensei.

"Muffle burn it?" I said. "Muffle."

"MUFFLE MUFFLE MUFFLE!" Zabuza threatened, swinging his big-ass sword around.

"Psst…you think he's trying to compensate for something?" I asked. Naruto and Sasuke didn't get it…yet. Kakashi-sensei, on the other hand, "accidentally" smacked me over the head.

"Oops. I am so sorry. How clumsy of me," he said.

"See, he gets it. Because he's a pervert," I grinned.

"I am not a pervert. You are a pervert for thinking I'm a pervert. It was an honest-to-goodness accident, I swear," his eye crinkled.

"Where did you learn how to speak Muffle?" Sasuke asked.

"Oh, it's easy," I told him. "Just take every word out of your sentences except for the important ones carrying the main topic, and arbitrarily intersperse 'Muffle' or 'Muffle Muffle' or even 'Muffle Muffle Muffle' at your discretion."

"Muffle Muffle like this?" Sasuke asked.

"Muffle. Yep."

"Muffle Muffle wanna try!" Naruto said. "Muffle Muffle!"

"Muffle Muffle very good! Muffle!"

"I was paying for shinobi, not lunatics," Tazuna was whining.

I pointed a thumb at Tazuna and shook my head. Then I leaned into Naruto and Sasuke and said conspiratorially, "He's such a Muffle head." Naruto and Sasuke snickered.

"I am starting to think that The Way of the Muffle is superior to The Way of the Hn," Sasuke confessed. "But I am unwilling to give up the Way of the Hn on basis of tradition."

"There is no need to abandon one for the other, Disciple Sasuke," I said gravely. "The Way of the Muffle and the Way of the Hn are meant to coexist peacefully."

"Then let us compromise. From now on we shall practice The Way of the Hn-Muffle," said Sasuke.

"Or the Way of the Muffle-Hn," I said.

"I prefer the Hn-Muffle," said Sasuke.

"I vote for the Muffle-Hn," said Naruto.

"Two to one. It's the Muffle-Hn," I said. "Sorry, Sasuke."

"Hn."

"Muffle."

And then the three of us basically stood around uselessly while Kakashi-sensei was fighting Zabuza like the awesome S-class shinobi they were, back when the ranking designations still existed. Then Zabuza led Kakashi-sensei out to the water, but this time Kakashi-sensei did _not _get trapped in the water bubble and we did _not _have to go rescue him because instead of running around for the sake of plot and looking cool like in the anime, he just spammed some ultra-concentrated lightning chakra to shock Zabuza into submission while they were both wet.

I must admit, watching Zabuza do the Marionette was a very interesting experience.

"Kakashi-sensei is so cool!" I cried, big fat anime tears of admiration forming at the corners of my eyes.

"Well, at least it's not me now," Sasuke stage-whispered to Naruto.

"I don't get what she sees in that weirdo," Naruto complained.

"Kakashi-sensei is an amazing shinobi! Do not diss the religion of Kakashi-ism!"

"…is that real?" Sasuke finally asked.

"Don't tell me you want to join, too!" Naruto wailed.

"YES! I HAVE A CONVERT!" I cheered. "But he's _mine_, you hear? You can admire him but you can't take him from me!" Not that I'm being a creeper or anything. Just a lot of fanboy/girl devotion, you know?

"…he's our sensei. We should show some solidarity in this team," Sasuke finally said.

"Ugh! I can't believe you guys!" Naruto whined. "Sakura-chan, I really don't understand you at all. It was easier when you were all about Sasuke-teme, but I can't fight Kakashi-sensei because he's our teacher!"

"Then don't fight him," I soothed Naruto. "Just go with the flow. I shall be the leader of the Church of Kakashi-ism, and if you two join now I shall make you both the High Cardinals. Our deity, of course, is Hatake Kakashi. And within this Church of Kakashi-ism, members shall partake in the worshipping of our deity Hatake Kakashi. Especially devoted members shall partake in the traditions of Headband-Tilting, Mask-Wearing, Book-Reading, and Looking-Bored-Before-Important-Company. This shall not interfere with the Way of the Muffle-Hn."

"I wouldn't mind wearing a mask," Sasuke rubbed his chin. "It might help keep me less high-profile, to stave off annoying fangirls."

"Or Snake Pedophiles," I agreed. "A worthy choice."

"…You think wearing a mask might make people acknowledge me as a more serious ninja?" Naruto asked.

"Ditch the orange jumpsuit, maybe," I said.

Naruto looked horrified. "But it's my favorite color!"

"You can get a jumpsuit of a more reasonable color and put something orange – but also small – _on _it," I suggested. "Orange makes you very noticeable, and noticeable means dead in shinobi language. And they don't make dead people Hokage." Okay, so Naruto's the main character, so that won't happen, but seriously, orange really hurts my eyes.

"All right," Naruto said dejectedly.

"Then it's settled," I proclaimed. "Upon return to Konoha, we shall get masks as our team thing. I heard Team 10 got matching earrings or something, and while that's nice, it's also totally impractical out in the field."

"Hn!" Sasuke and Naruto confirmed.

We looked back over to where Kakashi-sensei was finished with Zabuza, and dragging his unconscious body back from the pool. All of a sudden, a pair of random senbon appeared out of nowhere and hit Zabuza in the neck! Okay, not really. It was Haku the Hunter Nin.

"Thank you for your assistance," said Haku the Hunter Nin. "I shall take it from here." He jumped down next to Zabuza.

I was ready to zap him into unconsciousness, too, but Kakashi-sensei was right there and hit his neck instead, and Haku collapsed.

Huh. I guess Kakashi-sensei _is_ smarter when he's not chakra deprived. He must have been so tired last time that he wasn't really thinking of the weirdness of Haku's arrival as much as staying conscious and failing.

Then we trussed them up, and I healed Zabuza a little bit just so he could wake up for us to question. Yeah, he was working for Gato. Yeah, Gato wanted Tazuna dead. Yeah, Haku the Hunter Nin was his accomplice. No, their relationship did not extend beyond anything purely professional – what the hell are you talking about?

"Just checking, man," I said, raising my hands. "I mean, you _are _a grown, healthy man whose identity keeps you from traveling to civilian resorts freely, and you _do _have a very attractive if feminine boy wandering around proclaiming that he is your 'tool'." _The Internet must have its needs filled, and I am sorry to say that this is not the case. There, shippers! I asked, all right? Now get your heads out of the gutter!_

"Sakura, why don't you take your own advice that you gave to Naruto," Kakashi-sensei sighed, and continued the interrogation. Yeah, Zabuza was working for Gato because he needed money. Yeah, the money was so he could eventually return to the Bloody Mist and try the coup a second time.

"In the name of shinobi everywhere I shall invoke hypocrisy as it suits my purposes," I declared. "So, Zabuza, why _are _you so hung up on overthrowing the Mizukage? Do _you _want to become the Mizukage?"

"I wanna become Hokage," Naruto put in. "It's the best by far, but I guess Mizukage is good enough for second place."

Zabuza's eye twitched. Kakashi-sensei sighed. "Sasuke. Make both of them shut up."

"Hn."

"Muffle."

"So, Zabuza," said Kakashi-sensei, "why _are _you so hung up on overthrowing the Mizukage? Do _you _want to become the Mizukage?"

"That's what I _just_ sa-MUFFLE!" I was cut off as Sasuke clapped a hand over my mouth. "Traitor," I mumbled, although because of his hand, it came out as "Muffle." His hand stayed firmly. I licked his hand to get it off me. (Hey – it's unsanitary, but it works. Speaking from experience as the annoying youngest kid in the family.) He drew it back with a look of disgust and quickly wiped my spit on Naruto's arm.

"I shall never wash this jumpsuit again," said Naruto, eyes glittering.

"You're disgusting," said Sasuke.

"Mizukage? Nah, that's not for me. I was hoping to get someone else. That's all. I don't know how things are right now, but the Mist is a mess all because of that idiot Yagura! I don't know what happened to him. He was fine before he because Mizukage, and then all of a sudden he went absolutely nuts!" Zabuza was ranting angrily by now, not really caring what he said. And why should he? He had no home, and now, at Kakashi-sensei's kunai-point, no employer. "Started a massive civil war against all kekkei genkai possessors, ordered random, innocent, _good_, _powerful _shinobi executed, and basically massacred all semblances of talent we had! It effectively sliced our village's power in half! I _had _to do something. But I failed."

"So you raise money by working as a goon for Gato, terrorizing my village?" Tazuna, who had snuck up on the conversation, asked.

"Just like how you want to free _your _people by lying to Konoha," Kakashi-sensei shrugged.

"That's different!"

"Not my problem. That's three twelve-year-olds you just put in life-threatening danger because of faulty mission intelligence," Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "You could have asked for a waived fee, or bartered for trading agreements, or even taken out a loan."

Tazuna looked like he wanted to cry.

"Enough with these guys, sensei," Naruto whined. "Can't we just get to Wave now?"

"What are we doing with Zabuza?" Sasuke asked.

"In theory we're supposed to behead him and turn him in for a massive bounty…" I said. "Since he _is _our enemy and all. Mist and Konoha haven't had the best of relationships. Then again, shinobi villages all hate each other. What am I saying."

"Aw, Sakura-chan, don't be so mean!" said Naruto. "He might be a bad guy, but I think he has a good reason."

"We can't just _let him go,_" Kakashi-sensei sighed.

"Playing devil's advocate here," Sasuke mused, "he _did _just give us some invaluable information on the unstable state of the Mist. If we take him back to Konoha live and give him a chance to present his situation to the Hokage, he could make an argument for himself in return for intelligence. Then the decision will be in the Hokage's hands, not ours, and we'll still collect the bounty for his capture."

Zabuza's eyes narrowed. Kakashi-sensei's eyes narrowed. My eyes narrowed. Naruto was finding the inside of his nose very interesting.

"…Fine. Geez, you kids are really making me use up my summons today." Kakashi-sensei summoned two of his larger dogs, and had them pick up Zabuza and Haku in their jaws to be carried back to Konoha like some extremely twisted game of fetch. "Well, Tazuna? Let's go get your bridge built."

It was very anticlimactic after that. Mainly because it's late now and I'm sleepy. Basically Gato showed up on the bridge, flanked by an ass-ton of thugs, standing there like an idiot. (Honestly, what _is _it with shonen manga characters and _posing_?) Then Sasuke threw a kunai over Gato's head as a warning. Only Gato, being a businessman, not a trained shinobi, misjudged the trajectory and stepped backwards to duck.

Yeah…it was quite an embarrassing death, to dodge a projectile _into _its path instead of _away _from it.

Then Wave had a giant celebration. We went home, and there was another party after we collected pay for an A-rank mission and capture of Zabuza, who had an S-rank Bingo Book listing, and Haku, who wasn't explicitly listed, but was determined an A-rank because he was the last known member of a kekkei genkai possessing clan. And then we got an under-the-table bonus for secretly negotiating a preferential economic agreement with Wave which was probably going to get richer thanks to its advantageous geographical location for trade now that Gato wasn't hoarding all the money, to cover Tazuna's financial (and ideological) debt to Konoha.

Ooh, speaking of Haku still being alive, that's a good thing. Sasuke now finally has someone he can relate to. Maybe if they become friends, Sasuke might not go all emo anymore. Since, you know, a lot of his reasoning was, "It's me! It's all about me! And Itachi, too! But mainly me! You don't know how I feel! You didn't lose your entire clan overnight on the Village's orders!"

Well, now here's someone else. So if Sasuke ever goes all emo about how "No one will _ever _understand the pain I feel!", I can stick Haku in his face and tell him, _Suck that, Emo-Sasuke!_

Nice-Sasuke can stay, though. Nice-Sasuke's okay.

Anyway, the mission pay grades are logarithmic in scale, meaning they multiply by ten every time you go up a rank, meaning for genin, we were effing rich.

It's weird. Everything else in Naruto is, like, so cheap. And then you get like a million ryo for an S-rank and stuff. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do with all this money except buy new equipment (but even that's not so expensive, either). Damn, Kakashi-sensei must be a miser or something because I swear he's done like a million S-ranks while he was in ANBU, and I've never seen him blow money on anything other than Icha Icha.

On the other hand, the Pocky is calling. Mmm…Pocky…


End file.
